


Celebrity

by PyrrhaIphis



Category: Velvet Goldmine
Genre: Arthur-centric, Getting Together, Homophobic Language, M/M, The infamous foul mouth of Curt Wild, gay romance novels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-21
Updated: 2017-06-20
Packaged: 2018-11-16 01:50:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 39,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11243841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PyrrhaIphis/pseuds/PyrrhaIphis
Summary: After it was over, dozens upon dozens of books were written about the romance between Curt Wild and Brian Slade, some pretending to be fact, others barely fiction.  Only one of those books tried to represent both men fairly, rather than demonizing one of them.  Ten years after the end of the affair, the author is being pressed to write a sequel.  But now that he knows what's happened to them since, Arthur Stuart doesn't want to write the sequel his editor wants....(I didn't originally intend this to be quite so centered around Arthur, but the story required it.)





	1. Prologue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you happen to spot any inappropriate Americanisms coming from a British character, please let me know so I can fix them! Thanks. :)

            If Arthur Stuart’s life was an old movie, then Freddie Nicks would be played by Edward G. Robinson.  An Edward G. Robinson from Norfolk.  Arthur didn’t have any proof, as such, that his employer was a gangster—he wasn’t even sure if London _had_ gangsters like in the movies—but the man was mean, foul-mouthed, and generally ill-prepared for any eventuality that didn’t involve him obtaining money.

            And yet Arthur would feel guilty if he should complain about his employer’s nasty ways; after all, Freddie had hired an unproven teenage boy who had no references and no education.

            But he was using his salary—what little of it wasn’t going to his room and board—to _get_ an education.  Once he got his degree, he’d be able to kiss this terrible job goodbye, and find a more above-board place to work.  One that would hopefully pay him more than a subsistence wage.

            Low salary notwithstanding, there were perks to the job.  Freddie had his fingers in any number of pies; enough of them that he needed to keep a staff to help him manage everything, and a whole room full of records so Freddie could be sure to remember just who hadn’t finished paying him yet.  Most of Freddie’s staff were illiterate—or very nearly so—and Freddie himself had an aversion to reading, so he always kept someone on staff just to go through the records for him.  It had been Arthur’s good fortune to meet one of Freddie’s employees just when Arthur needed a job most desperately—the sudden and acrimonious break-up of the Flaming Creatures had left him friendless, homeless and without even a penny in his pocket—and that employee had been willing, for the price of a few blowjobs, to get Arthur a job with Freddie.  That job, of course, was to sit in the archives and look things up for Freddie whenever needed.  But Freddie rarely needed any records, so most of the time Arthur was free to sit in the archive and revise his schoolwork, which had definitely helped his grades!  Sometimes, he even worked on his novel, though he rarely felt safe bringing the precious manuscript anywhere near his co-workers, for fear of what they’d do if they saw it.

            It was early in Arthur’s final term when Freddie entered the archives with several of his biggest, dumbest goons in tow.  They were probably either just back from shaking down some innocent sod, or about to go off on such an endeavour.  “Here, fairy, I got a job for you!” Freddie laughed.

            “Jack Fairy’s a musician, and he doesn’t work here,” Arthur told him, without looking away from his schoolwork.

            “Don’t you talk back to me, you little faggot!” Freddie bellowed, grabbing Arthur by the front of his shirt and lifting him to his feet.  Unfortunately for Freddie, that left him looking _up_ at Arthur instead of down.  “After all the times I’ve walked in here and found you with someone else’s willy in your mouth, you oughta be down on your knees, thanking me for not firing you like everyone else would have done!”  Freddie’s cronies laughed, and offered the suggestion that he ought to fire Arthur then and there.

            “It only happened the once,” Arthur pointed out, putting an end to most of the laughter.

            Freddie released a wordless growl, and let go of Arthur’s shirt.  “The old bat in the ground storey flat off Hill won’t pay her rent.  Find me the overdue notices so no one can stop me from evicting her.”

            Arthur shrugged.  Anyone with the misfortune of having Freddie as a landlord would probably be glad to escape him, no matter how it was done.  Slowly, he turned and started heading towards the filing cabinets where Freddie’s real estate records were kept.

            “I don’t have all day, boy!  Hurry it up!” Freddie snapped, slapping Arthur’s arse hard, just as he often did his female employees’.

            Arthur stopped, and turned to look at Freddie over his shoulder, doing his best to contain his grin.  “I get that you’re attracted to me,” he said, “but I’m sorry; you’re really not my type.”

            Freddie’s face drained of all colour for a moment, and then turned a deep shade of royal purple.  He stormed out of the archive, screaming obscenities.  His lackeys followed him, looking a little uncertain.  Probably unsure of who to believe; after all, him telling Arthur to get down on his knees right after mentioning Arthur’s tendency to give blowjobs sounded more than a little suspicious, even to someone as dim-witted as the brutes Freddie preferred to surround himself with.

            As Arthur began looking through the filing cabinets, he couldn’t stop from humming to himself.  If nothing else, this job had taught him a courage he had never previously imagined himself capable of.

            Finding the file he needed, Arthur retrieved it from the drawer, and began looking through it.  The more he flipped through the pages, the more befuddled he felt.  This woman wasn’t in arrears on her payments.  In fact…

            Arthur knocked on the door to Freddie’s office tentatively.  There were all kinds of rules against employees simply walking in when the door was shut.  Freddie claimed it was because he was always having chippies in for ‘auditions’—though as the one who dealt with all of Freddie’s records, Arthur knew better than anyone that Freddie didn’t run any brothels—but Arthur suspected that if anyone was providing Freddie with services, it was young boys, and that Freddie was going to get violent with anyone who exposed his secret.  No one was with Freddie at present, however, and Arthur was soon letting himself into the office, clutching the file.

            “You’ve got the papers I need, yeah?”

            “Sort of.”  Arthur opened the file and took out several demands for rent.  They were all marked as having been paid.  “She’s not behind on her rent.  In fact, a couple of times she paid twice.”

            “Idiot,” Freddie snarled, snatching the forms away from Arthur.  Then he took out a stamp and carefully lined it up over the mark already left on the page.  He repeated the process with all the forms Arthur had provided, turning each one from a ‘paid’ to an ‘unpaid’ receipt.

            “But that’s illegal—immoral!”

            Freddie cuffed him in the side of the head.  “Once she’s out of there, I’ll be able to charge a new tenant twice as much rent—maybe three times as much.  That’s all that matters.  Now get the fuck out of my office.”

            Arthur hurried back to the archives before Freddie could hit him again.  Setting his schoolwork aside, he opened the file and started going over it in more detail.  Even without the ones Freddie had just taken and tampered with, it provided ample evidence that the woman had been paying her rent faithfully, and that Freddie had been abusing her faith over the years since he had obtained control of her building.  Should be more than enough to protect the old woman from being evicted…

            That night, after his class, Arthur went to the old woman’s flat and rang the bell.  She was a stately woman who held herself with the pride of a duchess, even though she was wearing a stained, old dressing gown.  “Who are you?” she asked.

            “I, uh, I work for Freddie Nicks,” Arthur started.

            “Get out!” the woman shouted, starting to slam the door in his face.

            “Wait, it’s not like that!” Arthur exclaimed, hastily using the file to block the latch so the door _couldn’t_ be properly closed.

            The old woman opened the door again, and looked at him suspiciously.  “Just what do you mean?”

            “This is the file he’s been keepin’ on your property,” Arthur told her, handing it over.  “The most recent papers are missin’, because he’s tampered with them, but this should be proof enough.  Especially since he’s got information in there about the offers he’s gotten on this flat.”

            Cautiously, the woman accepted the folder, and looked through it.  A smile grew on her lips.  “Bless you,” she said gently, leaning in to place a wrinkled kiss on his cheek.

            “Just don’t tell him I’m the one that gave it to you,” Arthur begged her.  “I don’t know what he’ll do to me if he finds out.”

            The old woman promised she’d keep mum, and Arthur hurried off back to his own meagre flat to try and get in an hour or so of revision before turning in for the night.

            Over the next few days, Arthur waited breathlessly to find out if the old woman had been able to beat Freddie and keep her flat.  It ended up going to court, where Freddie won the case, because he had the ‘more recent and accurate’ paperwork.

            The thought of that old woman having to pack up and move because Freddie was a greedy prat who wanted to rent out her flat to wealthier, younger people burned at Arthur.  Especially since he felt responsible for it.  He hadn’t exactly promised the old woman that she’d be able to win her court case, but he had come close to it, and yet she had, in the end, lost her home.

            After stewing about it for a month or so, Arthur came to a decision.  He spent every idle hour in the archives searching through the paperwork, looking for proof of every single wrongdoing in Freddie’s businesses, and particularly of all the ways he was cheating his tenants.  Once he had everything, though, he wasn’t sure what to do with it.  If he took it to the police, he might find himself accused of complicity, even though he was the one turning the fellow in.  Instead, he took his evidence to a newspaper he thought would surely be interested in breaking the story.

            They weren’t.

            They wouldn’t even _talk_ to him, let alone look at all the proof he’d brought with him.

            That failure nagged at him for the rest of the school term, and instead of celebrating with the other students after graduation, Arthur found himself sitting at a back table in a dimly lit pub, wishing he could afford to get properly drunk.  The pub was near the flat he had once shared with the Flaming Creatures, though none of them had ever gone in back then, because it was too ‘establishment.’  It was also the sort of place that didn’t let in men wearing make-up, but Arthur had been forced to give all that up rather abruptly when he started working for Freddie.  Even a little earring was enough to get a chap verbally—if not physically—abused by everyone in Freddie’s employ.

            “What’s a young fellow doing drinking alone of a Friday night?”  A vaguely familiar voice dragged Arthur out of his swamp-like miseries.  The man standing near the edge of his table worked for the BBC News, in a very minor capacity.  “Here, don’t I know you?”

            “You interviewed me once,” Arthur said, nodding.  “A few years ago, after…”  After Brian Slade was shot on stage…

            “That’s it,” the fellow said, taking a seat opposite Arthur in the isolated little booth.  “After the final Slade show.”  Final for all the wrong reasons.  Or were they the right reasons?  Arthur wasn’t even sure.  “You look a bit different in normal clothes.”

            Arthur shrugged.  The last thing he wanted to talk about right now was Brian Slade.  Or glam at all.

            “Why isn’t a young man like yourself out with his mates?  I seem to recall you had a whole pack of them with you.”

            “They broke up.”  Arthur cleared his throat a second, realising just how bad that had to sound.  “They were a band,” he clarified.  “I was…I guess…their groupie…”  Didn’t come close to the mark, but he wasn’t about to go into any more detail to a total stranger.  “It was years ago,” he added, shaking his head.

            “And you don’t have new friends to take their place?”

            “Not really.”

            “No mates from school, no co-workers?”

            “What the bloody hell does it matter to _you_?!” Arthur demanded.  He hadn’t exactly asked the man to join him in the first place!

            The reporter’s face flushed a bit, and he looked away.  “Just curious…” he said uncomfortably.

            Arthur swallowed heavily.  What was wrong with him?   Had he become dense lately, or was this fellow just inept at this?  Normally, it didn’t take Arthur nearly so long to realise someone was trying to chat him up.  “Sorry,” he said, trying not to sound as sheepish as he felt.  “I’ve been ‘aving a rough time of it lately.”

            “Tell me about your troubles,” the reporter said, with a warm smile.  “Maybe I can help.”  He patted Arthur’s hand across the table as he spoke, letting his own hand linger.

            “Do you control what stories run on the news?”

            “Well, no.”

            “Then you can’t help,” Arthur sighed.

            “At least tell me about it.  I’m sure I can do _something_ to help you.”

            Judging by the look on the other man’s face, his idea of ‘helping’ was going to involve his willy and Arthur’s arse, and yet Arthur still found himself explaining all about what Freddie was doing, and how he’d been unable to talk any of the newspapers into covering the story, despite all the evidence he had.

            The reporter nodded thoughtfully.  As he nodded, he leant back in his seat, stretching his legs forward under the table to cosy up to Arthur’s legs.  The pub equivalent of yawning in a darkened theatre to slip an arm around a girl’s shoulders.  Pathetic, but almost endearingly so.  “I can see why they’re reluctant to follow your leads,” he announced.  “For all they know, you’re just a bitter employee looking to land his innocent employer in hot water.  That’d be a waste of a journalist’s time.”

            Arthur sighed deeply.  The same thought had occurred to him, as well.  “Not much I can do then, is there?”  Short of turning over the evidence to the police and hope he wasn’t incriminating himself as an accessory.

            “You could write it all up yourself, and send it all in to a paper,” the reporter suggested.  “If they’re not required to do any of the work, they might be more likely to print it.”

            “Do you really think that would work?”  It sounded suspiciously easy.

            “Absolutely.  You know, I’ve got a friend who works as an editor.  Not the most prominent paper in town, but I think he’d take your story, as long as it was all ready for him.  If you’d like to nip back to my place, I could give you his address.”  Exactly.  Suspicious and easy.  Emphasis on the ‘easy.’

            But…Arthur hadn’t really ever shied away from being ‘easy’ in the past.  And what if the man really _did_ have a friend who could get the story made public?

            Besides, he wasn’t at all bad-looking.  A bit generic, perhaps, but he was a solidly built fellow in his thirties, with a respectable look to him.  And there were definitely times when Arthur felt the desire to make such stolid-looking men scream with lust…

            That desire to debauch the tedious and the proper may have played the larger role in his decision than any hope that the man really did have useful contacts.

            It was just one stop on the Underground to get to the fellow’s middle-class home, all too reminiscent of Arthur’s parents’ house in Manchester.  The whole time they were en route, the reporter asked various innocuous questions of Arthur, some about Freddie and the story, and some about glam rock.  In fact, the closer they got to their destination, the more the conversation became entirely focussed on glam and Brian Slade.  It was starting to annoy Arthur, in truth…

            “The wife and kids are on holiday in Scotland to see her mum,” the reporter said, as he unlocked the door to the house.  “Couldn’t get away, myself.  TV doesn’t take holidays, I told her.”

            “You’ve got a wife?”  Though he had certainly heard rumours of straight men who sometimes went looking for pretty young men to experiment with, Arthur had never encountered one before.

            “Of course,” the reporter replied, locking the door behind them.  “Wife, kids, mortgage.  I’m the living embodiment of the middle class dream, I am.”  One hand slid down Arthur’s back from the shoulder blades to his waist.  “And I hate it.”

            “I would, too,” Arthur replied, with a chuckle.  No matter what, he was never going to fall into that trap.  Better to live eternally alone than to shut himself up in the closet of normalcy.

            Almost before he knew what was happening, Arthur had been turned around, and the other man’s lips were pressed up against his own, his arms dragging their bodies so close together that Arthur could plainly feel the other man’s growing erection.  It felt nice, but…

            Arthur pushed out of the embrace.  “What about that friend of yours?” he asked.  “Was that just a ruse to get me into your house?”

            “I didn’t say a word that wasn’t true,” the reporter assured him.  “If you send in all the details, he’ll print it.  I promise.”

            “Then give me his name and address first,” Arthur insisted.  If he was going to cheapen himself to the point that he was selling his body for information, then he was damned well going to make sure he _got_ that information!

            “After,” the reporter replied, his voice breathy with lust.  They kissed a few more times, then the reporter started removing Arthur’s clothes, piece by piece, his hands trembling with excitement.  “I can’t tell you how much I miss glam,” he said.  “All those beautiful boys, wandering about the streets, prettied up for me to look at…fucking paradise, that’s what it was.  Even if I wasn’t allowed to touch…”

            As the reporter knelt down in front of Arthur and took his cock into his mouth, Arthur found himself more interested in his words than the blowjob.  It had never occurred to him to wonder how Brian’s bisexual revolution might have affected closeted homosexuals too old to take part.  The idea continued to dance around in his brain until the other man released his erection and stood up again, discarding his own clothes as he begged Arthur to take him.

            “ _Me_?” Arthur repeated, astonished.  “You want me to—no one ever wants that!”  He’d always thought that most men would prefer to die before letting a younger man have his way with them…

            “I want it,” the reporter assured him, with an overpowering kiss.  “Desperately.”

            Arthur was so eager to comply that he didn’t even stop to think of objecting to the fact that they were fucking in an entry hall.  And it might have gone just a tiny bit too quickly—again due to his over-excitement.  But did it feel good!

            After it was over, they put their clothes back on, and the reporter led Arthur into the kitchen, where he started brewing a pot of tea, and set out a plate of biscuits.  Arthur nibbled uncomfortably on the biscuits—homemade, not very good, and rather stale—as he watched the older man copying an address onto a slip of paper while the kettle was still on the boil.  The address was indeed for an editor at a paper, but it was barely better than a tabloid, really.  Still, Arthur smiled, and put the paper in his wallet for safe-keeping.

            “Cheers,” he said, as he put his wallet away.  “I’ll make good use of it.”  Then he cleared his throat uncomfortably.  “I’m not usually this cheap, you know,” Arthur added, more as self-reproach than anything else.  He had, in fact, quite often been even more cheap.  To the point of being entirely free.

            The reporter laughed sadly.  “I’m not usually in a position to give my boys anything more than a couple of pints,” he said, “so you’re actually making out rather well, all things considered.”

            Arthur looked around the kitchen as the other fellow poured the tea.  The signs of the house’s other occupants were everywhere.  Crayon drawings stuck to the refrigerator with magnets.  A vase of flowers in the windowsill.  Small toys left lying on one corner of the countertop.  A lacy apron.  Child-sized cups and plates in the dish drying rack.  A cheap romance novel half-hidden among recipe books.  “Why do you do it?” he asked, as he accepted the cup.  “Why would you have gotten married if this wasn’t the life you wanted?”

            The older man laughed as he sat down at the kitchen table with his own tea.  “The fact that you can even ask that question is Brian Slade’s true legacy,” he said, shaking his head.  “Before 1972, what boy would ever have imagined he could admit his true self to the world and still be accepted?”

            Arthur could feel himself colouring.  _He_ certainly hadn’t imagined that before Brian told the world that he was bisexual…  “But…” he started, feeling like he ought to say _something_ , even though he didn’t have any idea what.

            “You’ll find you have to make a choice, you know.  You can be like me, pretending to be like everyone else, or you can become a pariah, outcast for being who you really are.  There aren’t any other options in this world.”  He shook his head.  “Maybe if Slade hadn’t faked his own death that way, his revolution would have continued, and you’d be free to tell the world who you are and not be judged for it.  But he did, and the revolution died along with his career.  Do yourself a favour and find a nice, friendly girl who won’t mind that you don’t really love her.”

            “No.  I won’t.  I can’t.”

            “Well, I wish you all the luck you’re going to need with that,” the reporter replied, holding out his tea cup towards Arthur.  “A toast,” he said.  “To the future freedom.”

            “To the future freedom,” Arthur agreed, gently tapping the other cup with his own.  He’d never heard of drinking a toast with tea before, but he’d never had sex in a married man’s front hallway and then gone back to his kitchen for midnight tea, either.  Maybe this was normal among the deeply closeted set…

            Once Arthur was done with his tea, he had to leave.  After all, the reporter had neighbours, and if any of them should have noticed him going in, and then if he didn’t leave before morning…well!  That would have put an end to the whole charade.

            That was fine by Arthur, though.  He needed to get back to his flat and work on writing up that letter.  He wanted the world—well, the city—to know the truth about Freddie before he could ruin anyone else’s life.  As soon as he got home, despite the lateness of the hour, Arthur started writing up the letter, detailing all of Freddie’s injustices.

            The only time he got distracted was when the radio started playing a Curt Wild song.  Then Arthur’s mind—as always—drifted away from him, to bleached hair, a bare, shining chest, and silver trousers…

            The song had been over for a long time before Arthur managed to tear himself away from his fantasy.

            He had to work on his novel a bit before he could get back to the letter.

            All told, it ended up taking him nearly three days to get the letter ready to mail off.  And by the time it was ready to go, it was quite the thick packet, with all those stolen documents included.

            Every day after that, Arthur trod lightly at work, terrified of what would happen if Freddie needed any of those documents, and thereby found out they were missing.  Fortunately, it never came up.

            Upon posting the letter, Arthur made a habit of picking up that paper every day at the newsstand, in the hopes that his letter would have been printed in the letters column, or better yet sparked a proper investigation.  About a week later, he was astonished to find that there had been no investigation:  the paper had simply printed his letter as if it was an article by one of their own reporters.

            An injustice in an article about injustices.

            Arthur wasn’t sure if that was ironic, or merely annoying.

            By the time Arthur got to work, the injustice of the newspaper claiming one of its own people had written Arthur’s letter was the least of his concerns.  Freddie was on a rampage, and as soon as he laid eyes on Arthur, he let out a fearsome bellow.  “This was _your_ doing, wasn’t it, you fucking queer!”

            Freddie swung a punch, which Arthur did his best to dodge.  It still grazed his cheek and sent him flying, but at least it hadn’t broken anything.  He didn’t wait around to see what had set Freddie off.  Without even pausing, he was out the door and running down the street as fast as his legs would carry him.

            That evening, the news reports informed him that the police had—on the basis of that article—begun an investigation into Freddie’s actions, and that if he was found to be guilty of everything the article had accused him of, he might be facing decades in prison.  All well and good…except if Freddie managed to get his hands on Arthur before the trial.  Then it wouldn’t matter _what_ kind of prison sentence Freddie got, because Arthur wouldn’t be around to enjoy it.

            Consequently, Arthur was trying to find safe places to hide.  Very public places where there would be lots of people—and preferably lots of constables—about.  That seemed to be working, for a day or two.  Then as he was approaching his building one evening, he saw a hole in the window of his flat.

            Arthur’s hands were shaking as he unlocked the door, but there was no sign of an intruder within.  Just a brick and broken glass all over the floor.

            It wasn’t a ground floor flat; he probably should have been impressed that someone had been able to throw a brick up that high and still accurately hit his window with it at the same time, but he couldn’t spare the attention to be impressed just then:  there was a note tied to the brick.

            The note was covered in scrawled text, insulting him in every way imaginable—though mostly focussed on his preference for men—and promising to kill him in the most brutal and painful manner.  Even if the police arrested Freddie before he could make good on that promise, Arthur didn’t doubt that Freddie’s lackeys would still do it.

            He would never be safe again, would he?

            But he was damned if he was just going to roll over and die!  Especially not for doing the right thing.

            Hastily, Arthur packed up everything he could into his solitary suitcase.  Fortunately, the flat had come furnished, so he hadn’t too many things that wouldn’t fit.  Most of what he had to leave behind was clothing the Flaming Creatures had bought for him.  It pained him to leave it, but what else could he do with it?  No one dressed like that anymore…

            Once he had all his things together, Arthur left the flat with his case, and went downstairs to knock on his landlady’s door.  She looked at him suspiciously as soon as the door was open.  “Just what was that crashing noise earlier?” she asked.  “It sounded like it came from your flat, but you weren’t answering the door…”

            “I wasn’t home, Mrs. Hubbard,” Arthur assured her.  “There’s…”  He paused a moment, biting his lip.  How could he explain this?  “My former employer’s ‘aving a bit of trouble with the law, and he thinks it’s my fault.  That was his men breakin’ my window.  Just put up a sign in my window sayin’ room to let, and hopefully they’ll get the idea that I’m not there anymore.”

            “Where are you going?” she asked, as Arthur returned his key to her.

            Arthur shrugged.  “Anywhere they won’t expect me, for the moment.  I’ll probably be leavin’ London, in any case.”  He shook his head.  “I had to leave behind some old clothes.  They were pricey when they were new.  Maybe sellin’ them will pay for the window.”

            Mrs. Hubbard took some more convincing, but eventually she accepted that Arthur had to leave immediately or his life might be in danger.  She seemed to like the idea of catching the hoodlums in the act next time they tried to break the window, and forcing _them_ to pay for it.  Arthur wasn’t about to discourage that, though he doubted it would work out so neatly.

            He carried his suitcase as far as the nearest pub, and took a seat at a table by the back, wondering what on earth he was going to do now.  He could afford a bus out of town easily enough, but that felt like a very temporary solution; England was too small to afford safety from someone like Freddie Nicks.

            Arthur was going to have to leave the country, but how?

            Scrounging through his things, Arthur found the telephone numbers of some people he’d known back in the heady days of 1974 and 1975, the best years of his life.  If any of them hadn’t moved yet, maybe…

            Four phone calls later, Arthur hadn’t had any luck.  On the fifth, he finally got an answer.  “Um, hi, ma’am, I was tryin’ to reach Sally,” he said into the phone.

            The woman on the other end sighed sadly.  “My little girl’s hardly ever home anymore,” she replied.  “But who is this?”

            “Er, my name’s Arthur Stuart.  I, uh, I knew Sally a few years ago…”  In the Biblical sense, unfortunately, which was making this conversation all the more uncomfortable for Arthur.

            “What did you want to talk to her about, dear?”

            “Well…it’s a bit…awkward…”

            “I’ve held their hair out of the way while my daughter’s boyfriends vomited into my rubbish bin in the wee hours,” the woman replied snippily.  “I can take anything you can dish out.”

            Arthur rather doubted every part of that reply.  “It’s just…I’ve been…run out of my flat…and I need a place to hide—stay!—for the night.  I’ll be gone in the morning.”

            Sally’s mum needed a little more coaxing than that, but soon she was agreeing to let Arthur stay at her place for the night, and was driving her car out to fetch him.  It was humiliating, being rescued by a middle-aged woman, but what could he do?  Continuing his random attempts to ring people up with telephone numbers that were several years old wasn’t going to help.

            At least he had a good idea while he was waiting.  Tomorrow morning, first thing, he’d go to that newspaper and confront them with what they’d done.  He’d demand that they provide him a letter of recommendation establishing that he was the one who wrote that article, and pay him a plane ticket to someplace far away.  America, maybe.

            Then he could start over, where Freddie Nicks would never be able to reach him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know why Arthur ended up being such a slut in the prologue like this...it just sort of happened. (I promise it doesn't happen in the main body of the story!)


	2. Chapter One

            As he sat at his computer in his miserable little basement flat, Arthur tried not to be distracted by the winking crystal of the little green pin resting on the desk beside his computer.  The thing still smelled like beer, leather, and Curt’s musk, and every time Arthur inhaled, he was getting an unnerving, extremely inappropriate high off the odour.  He knew he ought to put it away somewhere that he couldn’t see it—at least until he finished working!—but somehow it felt only appropriate that the pin be there to witness it as he wrote his drab, unappealing, _untrue_ account of the Tommy Stone concert.

            He was, of course, already thoroughly distracted by the time the telephone rang.  He sighed, figuring it was Lou, calling to check up on him, and remind him that the Stone article was due immediately.  He answered it rather disinterestedly.  He didn’t still need to be reminded like a schoolboy.

            “You really like to cut it close, don’t you, Arthur?” Mitch’s voice demanded.  Wrong editor, Arthur thought, with a wry smile.  “Your deadline’s next month.  Or have you forgotten?”

            “Is it really that soon?”

            “It’s been mid-March since the beginning, and it’s already early February,” Mitch pointed out.  “Tell me it’s almost done.”

            Arthur sighed.  “Barely started, more like,” he admitted.  “I’m sorry.  There’s no way I’ll be able to make the deadline.  Work’s been heavy lately, and with the election comin’ up…”

            “You should have had plenty of time to finish it,” Mitch insisted.  “You finished some of the others in only a month!”

            “Most stories don’t flow that easily.”  An editor ought to know that.  “This one’s just not workin’.  I think I may ‘ave to start over.”  Much as he hated the thought.  Though he’d barely written more than a dozen pages anyway.

            “If that’ll let you finish faster, do it,” Mitch agreed.  “Why don’t you write a sequel to _Celebrity_?  That’s still your best-seller.”

            Arthur bit his lip.  “I don’t think I can do that.”  More so now than ever before.

            “You still get fan mail for it, you know.”

            “That’s not the point.  There’s nowhere for the story to go.”

            “What story?  Arthur, people don’t read these books for their stories.  They read them because it’s slightly less questionable than porn,” Mitch said flatly.

            Arthur laughed.  “I bet you say that to all the girls.”

            “Look, how hard can it be?” Mitch insisted.  “Just give ‘em something new to get in a fight about, and then write about it in ten chapter detail while they fuck to make up from their quarrel.”

            “That’s a lot of sex.”

            “It’s what sells.”

            “I don’t think the human body could survive that much straight sex,” Arthur pointed out.

            “But this isn’t _straight_ sex,” Mitch laughed.

            “You know what I meant.”  Arthur shook his head, even though the gesture was pointless in a phone conversation.  “Those characters are important to me.  I can’t just write a twelve chapter puff porn piece about them.  The others, sure, but not them.”

            “Okay, you know what?  I don’t give a shit what you write, as long as it’s a hundred and twenty pages long and has at least ten sex scenes in it,” Mitch said coldly.  “And as long as it’s finished by March 15th.”  There was a crashing sound as Mitch hung up the phone.

            “Like I don’t ‘ave enough problems already,” Arthur sighed, setting his own phone back on the base.

            Getting up out of his computer chair, he moved over to the further locker/closet, and started rooting through the books stored within.  Down at the back, Arthur found what he was looking for:  a battered paperback book depicting a man in a feathered catsuit standing on stage with a microphone as fireworks went off all around him.  Written in marquee letters at the top of the book was the title, _Celebrity_ , and down below the stage, blending into the woodwork, was his less-than-clever pen name, Arthur King.

            In truth, _Celebrity_ started out as a kind of therapy.  One of the few women Arthur had dated had been studying psychology at university.  When he had told her of how he was haunted by that night with Curt Wild—and by glam in general—she had told him he needed to do something to give himself closure.  To tell the world about it.  He was pretty sure, looking back on it, that she had meant something along the lines of a tacky tell-all book, but Arthur had vented all his feelings into fiction instead.

            It was intended as an exorcism, to rid him of Maxwell Demon—of _all_ his demons.

            And, really, it had worked quite well.  After seeing _Celebrity_ in print, Arthur had felt that portion of his life was well and truly over, disconnected from him, someone else’s life.

            But that was before he had seen the inspirations for his characters again, in the flesh.  Just as close as he had seen them ten years ago.

            Arthur sat down on his bed and flipped through the book.  He had done his best to represent everyone fairly and accurately, but he had known so much less then.  He hadn’t known that Curt Wild hadn’t really been brought up by wolves—though, truthfully, he _ought_ to have been able to figure that out—so he had named him Rudyard “Ruddy” London, an absurdly British name for the novel’s sole American character.  He hadn’t realised at the time that Mandy was also an American, so her equivalent—blandly named Jane—was as English as high tea with the Queen Mum.

            There could be no approximating Brian Slade.  Arthur had known that all along.  The real article was too much to duplicate.  But he’d done what he could with his paltry skills.  Hadn’t bothered with Maxwell Demon, though; better to leave things less complicated, he had thought, and he had probably been right about that.  The protagonist of his novel, Alexander Dupres, was beautiful, mysterious, and yet kind, even vulnerable when he needed to be.  His boldness in admitting his bisexuality—not to mention in having a well-publicised affair with another man—and his elegant, over-the-top taste in clothing ensured that anyone who knew anything about Brian couldn’t fail to recognise him.

            Most of the little things about the story were just plain wrong, Arthur knew now.  He hadn’t known then how Brian and Curt first met, and had guessed something that—while very plausible, even in reality—was far from the truth of Brian actively seeking Curt out across half the world.  He hadn’t known why they had broken up—and even after hearing Mandy’s account of it, it still didn’t make all that much sense to him, to be honest—so he had made up something there, too, even if it was rather less plausible.

            Ruddy, having to fill a few days without Alexander, who was off to visit Jane’s parents, met a closeted homosexual who was quite thrilled by everything that glam was doing, because it let him think that maybe someday he could step out of the closet himself.  Being overcome by the pathos of the man’s story, and lonely without his lover, Ruddy did the natural thing, and shagged the man.  Only then Alexander walked in on them, and they got in a terrible fight, and both stormed off, vowing never to see each other again.

            When Arthur had started writing the book, he had intended to have it follow the true course of what had happened.  No, not even that.  He wanted it to take the course that would—in the long run—have been _less_ painful for the fans.  Originally, he was going to have Alexander actually murdered on stage.  But he hadn’t been able to force himself to write that, and instead Alexander showed up on stage so high that he fell off the stage and nearly died, between the injuries and the overdose.

            Months later, there was a group concert mourning the death of glam rock—even though there was no reason, in the novel, that glam wouldn’t continue unabated, since Alexander hadn’t betrayed anyone, nor had he died—and after the concert, Ruddy spent a beautiful night with a teenage fan.  It had been beyond awkward, trying to write about that encounter from _Curt’s_ perspective, but it had still provided some catharsis.

            Of course, because Arthur wanted _someone_ to have a happy ending, after Ruddy came down from the rooftop, he found Alexander waiting for him, and the two of them made up their differences to live happily ever after.

            Despite describing the encounter in loving detail, Arthur hadn’t even given the character that was his teenage self a name.  He was just some anonymous teenage fan lucky enough to spend a night with Ruddy under the stars.  And not one of those fan letters he had gotten for _Celebrity_ had ever asked about that teenage fan, or wanted to see Ruddy leave Alexander for him.  Of course they hadn’t.  Why would they?

            Six months ago, if Mitch had asked him to write a sequel to _Celebrity_ , Arthur probably would have done it.  Even _one_ month ago, he might have done it.

            But how could he do it now?  Now that he knew what Brian had become, and now that he had spoken to Curt again, so close to him that they were breathing the same air, and their fingertips had brushed against each other…

            No, if he tried to write about those characters now, Alexander would have become a sell-out, and Ruddy would be searching out that teenage fan—or vice-versa—so they could fall in love.

            That wasn’t what anyone wanted from a sequel to _Celebrity_.  No one other than Arthur, that is.

            He couldn’t write a sequel to it.  Mitch would just have to be disappointed.

            Besides, right now he had to write that bloody Stone article, or he’d lose his day job.  And these novels didn’t pay nearly enough to live on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rudyard "Ruddy" London is definitely one of the best names I've ever come up with. So I hereby reserve it just in case I ever think of a good use for it in any of my original works. :P
> 
> Also, just to make sure no one misinterprets, Arthur's novels are essentially the gay equivalent of Harlequin romances. So it's not that I'm so ignorant as to think that a book written by-and-for gay men must be pornographically explicit; it's that he's writing in an explicit sub-genre. (Confusion would be more likely to spring up in later chapters than in this one...but I thought it best to get the explanation in too early rather than too late.)


	3. Chapter Two

            That Sunday, 5th February, Arthur couldn’t bear to stay home, alone with the ghosts of his past, and everything that had happened ten years prior.  Though he wasn’t entirely sure where he was going, he left the flat early, and got on the subway.

            When he got off at a random stop, he saw two teenage girls holding an open newspaper and giggling to each other.  “What _are_ they doing?!” one of them squealed, her voice ear-splitting in the enclosed area of the subway platform.

            “So gross!” the other agreed.  “God, I can so see why someone shot him!”

            Arthur’s fists clenched up, and he had to shut his eyes to steady himself, trying to drown out the world.  When he opened them again, the girls were gone, having left their newspaper behind on the bench where they had been sitting.  As he approached the bench, he saw that it was one of the _Herald_ ’s closest competitors.  This particular paper had the popular feature “On this Day in History.”  Arthur had often suggested to Lou that the _Herald_ should institute something similar, because he knew he would do a better job at such a feature than the imbeciles at their competitor.

            He didn’t have to look to know what today’s article said, yet he couldn’t stop himself from looking.

            Sure enough, today’s headline for the “On this Day in History” column was “Brian Slade ‘Shot’ on Stage,” with the follow-up text explaining that it was a hoax, though the ruse wasn’t revealed for months afterward.

            But the photo wasn’t from that fateful concert.

            It was the same photo that had been reproduced so many times over the last ten years.  The photo that had driven Arthur out of his unhappy home.

            Ten years ago, Arthur had just seen the image and found it unbearably sensuous, filling him with the desire to someday be a part of something so beautiful.  Which part hadn’t mattered.  Even who his partner would be hadn’t mattered, not really.

            But now, looking at that image, all he could think was to imagine that he was the one on his knees.  No guitar in the way, no cameras, no band, no audience, no one but himself and Curt, his hands clutching Curt’s arse as—

            No, there was no point in unleashing his desirous fantasies.

            Particularly not in a public place.

            Arthur set the newspaper down, and headed for the cool February air outside, hoping it would calm him down.

 

***

 

_(A letter, hand-written in thick, angular script.  Written on cheap stationery sent out free by a nature conservation charity.  At the bottom of the page is printed a small photo of wolf cubs peering between the stems of wildflowers.  At the top of the page is printed “From the desk of Mr. Kurt Wilde,” followed by an address.  The “K” has been partially obliterated with pen scribbles to turn it into an angular “C.”  The “e” has been similarly scratched off “Wilde,” just as the entire address has been blacked out.  The “Mr.” has only been half-heartedly crossed off.)_

 

Feb. 9

 

Arthur,

 

            I saw your article in the paper this morning, about Reynolds’ arrival in New York.  Bet your editor spent a long time on it with his little red pen, didn’t he?  Every time it sounded like you were going to talk about what Reynolds is really up to with that fucking committee of his, the subject suddenly got changed.  I wonder how much longer that article originally was?

            I tried calling you at work, but that bitch who answers the phone wouldn’t let me talk to you, even after I explained who I was and how I knew you.  Eventually, she threatened to call the cops if I didn’t stop calling.  So I thought I’d hang out in front of the building and wait for you to leave, but then she really DID call the cops on me!  They said I was “loitering in a manner liable to cause a breach of the peace.”  I was just leaning on my car having a smoke.  What’s so wrong about that?

            If one of the cops hadn’t been a fan, I’d probably have gotten arrested.  They still made me leave, but at least all I had to do was sign a half dozen autographs, instead of paying a fine or some shit.  That cop kept giving me the look.  You must know the one I mean.  You probably see it often enough.  The “if only we weren’t in public, I’d ask you to fuck me” look.

            I miss the days that look wasn’t necessary.  Don’t you?  They’d just come right out and tell me they wanted me.  (Right in front of Brian, too.  Pissed him the hell off.  Even though he got way more of that than I ever did.)  But thinking about all that made me think about something else, something I’d read years ago.

            Over the last twelve years, there must have been a hundred books written about me and Brian.  Trashy ones filled with grainy photos and lots of dumbass speculation, preachy shit that talked about how we were gonna get a brand new ring in Hell for seducing so many innocents to sodomy, and a fucking ton of fiction that just changed the names a little.  Between managers, lovers and fans, I bet I’ve seen every one of those books.  Most of them ended up right in the trash can.  But there was one I kept.  Even though a lot of shit was so wrong it made me laugh, it made me feel like the author really knew about us.  Not knew us personally, but had studied us, and really CARED about us.  There were even a lot of little incidents that most people didn’t know about.

            I found the book on my shelf after I got home today.  One of those incidents was a little TOO knowledgeable to come from just a fan:

            “Ruddy sat on the edge of the rooftop, waiting.  Though it had been a warm summer’s day, the night air was cool and crisp.  Cleaner than usual for London, and the sky so clear that Ruddy could see more stars than he ever had in a city before tonight.  He was just about to open his can of beer when the door to the rooftop opened, and the boy stepped nervously out under the starry sky.

            “As the beautiful youth approached him, Ruddy asked him about himself—his name, his likes and dislikes—and repeatedly assured him he didn’t need to worry or be afraid.  The boy looked to be about seventeen or eighteen, and was unable to keep a nervous grin from splitting his features.  Like most of the fans downstairs, he was dressed in Alexander’s pretty style, more like a woman than a man, and the femininity of his unhardened face lent itself well to the illusion.  Ruddy thought he might actually be pulling off the look better than Alexander did, in fact.

            “It didn’t take long before they were standing only inches apart, and Ruddy was gently stroking the boy’s smooth chin.  Judging by the bulge in his trousers, at least one thing about the young man was certainly well developed, Ruddy reflected, as he began helping him out of his shirt.  The boy was slender—skinny, really—with limbs a bit too long for his body; though he was already as tall as Ruddy was, he probably was going to grow taller yet, judging by how long and scrawny his arms and legs were.

            “That only made it more important to appreciate him now, while he was still in this liminal state of perfection…”

            I should have known the first time I read that just who wrote it.  (Calling yourself “beautiful” is pretty arrogant, though, Arthur.  It’s the right word to use, but not very modest.)  If you’d included the shooting star, then I don’t think I would have ever doubted that you wrote it.  Is that why you didn’t?  (I bet you still get horny when you hear the words “Make a wish,” don’t you?)

            When that book was first shown to me, I reacted to the author’s name the same way everyone else probably does:  I laughed, ‘cause I thought someone just turned King Arthur backwards and called it a pen name.  But now I think I really get it.  There were some Kings of England named Stuart, weren’t there?  (Speaking of names, Ruddy London is a fucking awesome name for me.  Everyone else just changed my name to “Savage.”)

            I’ve got a lot of questions that can’t really be asked in a letter.  So I’d like to speak to you in person sometime.  Just we can’t talk about Brian:  the babysitters should be gone, but I’m never really sure when I’m being watched and when I’m not.

            I don’t know how long it’ll take for your publisher to get this letter to you, so I don’t want to specify a date only for you to get this weeks later.  Instead, I’m just going to wait for you in that bar where we spoke earlier.  Same table where I was before.  Every Friday night, from 7 to 8.

            If you’re not interested in talking to me, you don’t have to show up.

 

 

            Curt Wild


	4. Chapter Three

            Curt grimaced as he snuffed out his cigarette.  The ashtray was pretty full; someone else had been fucking chain smoking at that table before he got there.

            A quick glance at his watch told him it was ten after 8.  Another no-show.  Maybe that’s all there was ever going to be.

            How long did he have to keep doing this?  When was it going to turn into something pathetic?  Maybe it had started out pathetic in the first place.

            Well, he’d just finish up his beer and go.  He could worry about the rest later.  By definition, there was a week between one Friday and the next.  Plenty of time to figure out if this was just a waste of his time.

            He downed the dregs from his bottle, and was just about to stand up when he heard the running footsteps.  Curt looked up just in time to see Arthur pelt around the corner and head towards him.  Seeing that Curt was still there, his face lit up with that wide grin, and he finished running over, screeching to a halt beside the table, where he stood there panting long enough for Curt to fully take in his appearance.  Rumpled khaki pants and an unattractive knit shirt that was wearing thin around the collar, as if it had been washed one too many times.  Brian’s pin sparkled below that worn-out collar, though, twinkling as if it was glad to see Curt again.  The gel had mostly lost its hold on Arthur’s hair, which did a lot to improve his looks over the last time Curt had seen him, and his cheeks were flushed with exertion, making him look almost as young as he had been ten years ago.  Curt was definitely approaching semi territory by the time Arthur managed to say anything.

            “Sorry,” he panted.  “Ran all the way from the station.”  Impressive, considering that was almost three blocks away.

            Curt laughed.  “Sit down, catch your breath.”  He got to his feet even as Arthur was clumsily pulling out a chair.  “I’ll get us a couple of beers.”  The bartender gave him a suspicious look when Curt ordered two bottles of beer, but didn’t say anything.  By the time Curt got back to the table, Arthur was sitting down, and his breathing had basically returned to normal.  He still chugged about half his beer as soon as he got it, though.

            “I get home pretty late some nights,” Arthur explained, “and the letter was in today’s post, so—”

            “You don’t have to explain,” Curt assured him.  Realistically, it had probably been ridiculous for him to have expected Arthur to show up so soon.  Last week had only been eight days after he’d dropped the letter in the mail in the first place.  Of course, the publisher had a local address, so it hadn’t had to go very far, but Curt had no idea how many employees they had, or how much mail those employees had to sort through.  Being a press that published lurid gay romances, they probably only had two or three office staff, at most.  “Can I ask why you wrote that book in the first place?”

            Arthur smiled weakly.  “I wanted to put my past behind me.  Or I thought I did,” he added, with a nervous look that told Curt there was certainly _one_ part of his past he wanted to embrace, rather than set aside.  Of course there was.  Why else would he even _be_ here?  “No one else’s ever realized how I picked my pen name before,” he added, with a weak chuckle.

            Curt laughed, trying to sound proud of himself.  He’d actually had to look it up in a neighbor’s encyclopedia before he wrote that part of the letter; he didn’t want to get it entirely wrong and sound like a total moron.  “I’m guessing from the sex scenes that you don’t actually have much experience being on top,” he commented, just as Arthur was lifting his beer to his lips.

            Predictably, Arthur choked on his beer.  He also turned flame red.  “You—you’re not the first to say so,” he admitted once he was done coughing.

            “So did you go out clubbing to get more experience before writing your next book?” Curt surmised.  “The inside of the back cover said you’ve written several more…”

            “Oh, you’ve got a second edition copy?”  Arthur smiled.  “ _Celebrity_ ’s the only one that’s ever sold well enough to get a second printing.  But, no, I didn’t do any research.  I just read a lot of what other people had written.  I don’t really ‘ave time for sex anymore.”

            “That sucks.”

            “Yeah.”  Arthur frowned, staring into his beer bottle.  “But it’s easier to explain.”

            “Explain?” Curt repeated.  “You mean you’re gay, not bisexual, then?”

            Arthur shrugged.  “I thought I was bisexual, back in the early ‘70s.  Didn’t last long.  I just didn’t get much enjoyment out of bein’ with girls.  I wasn’t too subtle about it, after I figured it out.  Went around with all too many blokes.  Started getting a reputation for it.  I didn’t want that kind of reputation here, too, so I insisted I was too busy whenever someone asked, started tellin’ people I was married to my work.”

            “Guess you’d have to be, with two writing jobs.  Any of your co-workers know about the other job?” Curt asked, with a chuckle.  What would a bunch of stodgy old newspaper men think if they knew their hot young co-worker secretly wrote gay porn on the side?

            “God, no!  But they noticed something was off about me after a while.  I always seemed busy, but I wasn’t braggin’ about hot dates like the bachelors, and wasn’t complainin’ about a wife like the married men.  They started askin’ questions.  But if I let them think I was so devoted to my work for the ‘ _Erald_ that I don’t ‘ave time for love, they accept that.  They don’t think there’s anything weird about it.”

            “It’s the ‘80s way,” Curt agreed.  “Fuck-all about other people, and just claw your way to the top.”  He sighed.  That was one of the problems with the world today.  One of the many problems.  Too much fuck-all and not enough fucking.  Maybe that’d make a good album title: _Make Love, Not Money_.  Probably wouldn’t sell to an ‘80s crowd, though.  Wasn’t really his type of title, anyway.  “How long’s it been?  Since you got laid?”

            Arthur avoided his gaze, turning to look back at the entrance to the bar, as if he was expecting someone he knew to come in and spy on him.  “It’s been…I guess…not since I left England…” he admitted, his voice shuddering every time it started up again after a pause.

            “How long’s that?”

            “About…six years.”

            “Shit!  I thought it’d been a long time since _I’d_ gotten any, but… _shit!_ ”  Curt shook his head as Arthur looked back at him.  “You must be horny as hell.”

            “It’s—it’s not always…easy…”

            “I wonder just how easy it’d be,” Curt mused aloud.

            “How easy what would be?” Arthur asked, his eyes widening in panic as Curt got to his feet.

            He crossed the tiny distance between them, and leaned down close beside Arthur, breathing in his ear.  Those loose khakis responded instantly, telegraphing it as Arthur started getting a hard-on.  Curt chuckled as he took his seat again.  “Fucking easy,” he concluded.

            “That…that wasn’t…don’t do that!”

            Curt leaned forward across the table, and lowered his voice.  “If I said I wanted to take you into the john right now and fuck you, would you say ‘yes’?”

            Arthur’s face became such a deep crimson that it looked painful.  “Are you actually askin’, or is this just hypothetical?”

            Curt leaned back again.  “Does it matter?”

            “Actually ask, and then you’ll know the answer.  Otherwise, bugger off.”

            Curt laughed.  So he got a bit feisty when he was embarrassed?  That could be cute.  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

            Arthur downed the rest of his beer in a single, massive gulp.  “I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t toy with me,” he said, as he put the bottle back down.

            “I’m not.”  Much.

            “What else would you call that, if it’s not—”  Arthur’s objection was cut off instantly as Curt put a hand on his knee under the table.  His pants were probably ballooning out even more than before, but it didn’t seem like a good idea to check.

            “Let me ask you something,” Curt said, pulling his hand back again.  “A serious question.”

            “What is it?”

            “About the book.  Why’d you end it the way you did?  Why did you have me and—sorry—Ruddy and Alexander get back together again?”

            Arthur shrugged, looking longingly at his now-empty bottle.  “It seemed like the way to end it.  It’s what the readers wanted to happen.”

            “But it’s not what you wanted, right?”

            Arthur sighed.  “It didn’t start out that way, but it ended bein’ up a sleazy romance.  It’s a rule that they’ve got to ‘ave a happy ending.  Someone had to end up livin’ happily ever after, fucking into the sunset.  The ‘ole book had been about Alexander and Ruddy, so why _not_ let them be the ones with the happy ending?”

            “Because you’d have rather seen Ruddy end up with his teenage fan.”

            Arthur blushed again, and shut his eyes.  “But that’s not what really happened, is it?  I was tryin’ to get rid of my past, not re-write it.”

            “Fair enough.”  Depressing, though, to the past that was being written off.  “Sounds like it worked, as far as the readers are concerned.  You said it was your best seller?”

            “Yeah.  The others are still languishin’ in book stores that can’t move them, but _Celebrity_ ’s almost sold out its second printing.”

            “What kind of book stores sell gay porn?” Curt asked.  He’d never seen any!

            Arthur laughed.  “Not many,” he admitted.  “There’s a few in town here, some in San Francisco and other major cities.  But anyone livin’ anywhere else has to write in to the publisher to get the books.  Makes it easier for the publisher to know just how many are really sellin’.”

            “And you think it’s because you let me—Ruddy and Alexander end up together that it sold well?”

            “I don’t know.”  Arthur shrugged.  “It might just be popular with fans of you and Brian in general, regardless of the ending.  Like you said, everyone else tended to demonize one of you.”  Not ‘one of.’  It was _always_ Curt who got demonized.  Wouldn’t bother him so much if at least a few of the authors had made _Brian_ into the demon for a change.  “For people like me who loved seein’ you together, ‘aving it stilted like that makes it even more painful than reality.”

            “Then you _did_ want us to get back together.”

            “Once upon a time, yeah.”  He smiled sheepishly.  “That was before I actually met you…”  Arthur shook his head.  “Even after that, I still…the two of you together, romantically, were very important to me at the time.”  He sighed.  “That makes my editor’s demands even more frustratin’.”

            “What demands?”

            “He wants a sequel.  To _Celebrity_.”  Arthur’s lips pursed up.  “Before I researched that story…I wouldn’t ‘ave been bothered by it.  It’d be pointless fantasy, a ‘what if’ that could never be, but harmless.  It doesn’t seem so harmless now that I know what Brian’s been doin’ with the last four years of his life.”

            “So why not write the ‘what if’ of something else, instead?” Curt suggested, with a grin.  “Maybe ‘what if that teenage fan goes looking for Ruddy ten years later’…”

            Arthur’s dark eyes met his and stuck there.  “I could write that in a heartbeat,” he agreed.  “But I don’t know if the readers would like it.”

            “So make ‘em like it.  Isn’t that your job?”

            “Well, sort of…”

            Curt drained the last of his beer, and got to his feet.  “Maybe I could help you write it,” he suggested.  “Want to go back to my place for a story session?”  Lucky this wasn’t the first time he’d fucked a novelist…

            Arthur’s smile was so broad it almost looked painful.  “I’d like that,” he agreed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the first time I've made Arthur gay instead of bi. It works--especially in the context of this story--but it feels a little like a betrayal of the character somehow. (Or maybe that's just me.)


	5. Chapter Four

            The air was the first thing Arthur noticed when he woke up.  It wasn’t stale and musty, like the air in his own flat.  The air tasted fresh, even though it smelt of cigarette smoke, sweat, semen, and—faintly—of cinnamon and maple syrup.

            The second thing he noticed should have been the first:  the warm pressure of Curt’s body pressed up behind his, and his arm draped across Arthur’s waist.  It felt too good to be real, but too real to be a dream.  Either way, it was enough to keep Arthur motionless in bed, wanting to enjoy the sensation as long as physically possible.

            Eventually, Curt stirred, pulling Arthur a little closer and digging his face half into the pillow and half into Arthur’s shoulder, like a kitten falling back to sleep after being roused by its mum.  But he didn’t say anything, and made no move to get up.

            “Curt?” Arthur asked tentatively.  If he was _really_ trying to get more sleep, Arthur didn’t want to upset him by forcing him to wake.

            “Mmm.”  Was that an answer?  Arthur wasn’t sure, but it did seem to at least vaguely imply consciousness, so he decided to risk it.

            “Do you smell maple syrup?”

            For thirty seconds or so, there was no reaction whatsoever.  Then Curt started laughing.  “Yeah,” he said.  “Old lady next door must have her grandkids over again.  Fuck, I hope they didn’t hear anything last night.”

            “Why can we smell the cooking from the flat next door?” Arthur asked, trying—somewhat futilely—to look at Curt over his shoulder.

            “You know how there’s usually a vent over a stove to get rid of burnt smells and shit?”  Curt let go of Arthur and rolled over onto his back, letting Arthur turn over to face him.  “The vents in my kitchen and the old lady’s connect to each other instead of the outside.”

            “Just who the bloody hell designed this building?”

            “A fucking moron,” Curt laughed.  “There’s all kinds of weird shit going on here, if you look close enough.  Makes the rent cheap, though.”

            Considering Curt’s building was on the outskirts of a rather gentrified area, Arthur found everything about the idea more than a little odd.  But he decided he probably shouldn’t say so.  “What happens if you and your neighbour try to cook at the same time?”

            Curt laughed.  “Do you really think _I_ cook?”

            “Maybe not,” Arthur admitted.  “I don’t even have a kitchen in my flat, so I guess I don’t, either.”

            “Two jobs, and you can’t even afford a full apartment?”

            Arthur sighed.  “Bein’ a journalist is almost as ill-payin’ as writing gay romance novels.  I’m lucky to ‘ave the place I’ve got.”

            “How’d you end up writing more novels?” Curt asked, looking into his eyes.  “If that first one was just therapy…”

            Arthur shrugged.  “One of my early stories at the _‘Erald_ was about a crime spree the police—and the other papers—were pretty much ignorin’.  Turned out it wasn’t just random robberies and assault; it was targeted homophobia.  One of the stores that was worst afflicted was a bookstore, sellin’ gay fiction.  Most of it was hand-bound stuff, printed up by the authors themselves.”  He smiled, remembering his awe at learning there were such stores, and his inability to look around with one of the _Herald_ ’s photographers right beside him.  “I ‘ad to go back later, after they were open again, to really look around.  When I got there, they’d just gotten in some books from Europe.  Includin’ one of those ones you were talkin’ about.  Particularly bad one.”

            “Tell me you didn’t buy it.”

            Arthur laughed.  “After leafin’ through it a little, I knew it’d just enrage me.  Actually, I think I knew that just by readin’ the back.  Like you said, they’d changed your name to ‘Savage.’  But that put me in mind of my book, of lettin’ other people see it.  The man who ran the store was able to give me an address for a local publisher that handled those kinds of books.  So on my next day off, I took in my only copy—about half typed, and half written by hand—and sat there waitin’ nervously while the editor read it over.  He wanted some changes—they _always_ want changes—startin’ with the title, but he was enthusiastic about publishin’ it.”  Unrealistically enthusiastic, in fact.  Mitch had assured him that it would be such a best-seller that even straight people would be reading it.  It didn’t even qualify as a best-seller in gay romance terms, as far as Arthur could tell.  “I had to sign a contract, promisin’ a certain number of drafts of a certain length in a certain amount of time.  Far as I can tell, it’s not an unusual contract, even from regular publishers.  Just the material’s different.  And there’s a lot less money involved.”

            “Does that contract let him pick what you write about?”

            “He can’t _require_ me to write about any one thing or another—as long as it involves men shagging other men, I’m meetin’ my contractual obligations—but he can and does make suggestions.  And he’s been suggestin’ a sequel to _Celebrity_ for a long time now.”  Arthur sighed.  “It doesn’t really matter.”

            “Why not?”

            “I’ll never meet my deadline, no matter what I write about.  I ‘aven’t even started, and it’s due the 15th.”

            “That gives you, what, two and a half weeks?  If it’s as short as _Celebrity_ , surely you can do that.”

            “If it wasn’t an election year, maybe.  I’m not losin’ my day job just to grind out another book no one wants to bloody read,” Arthur grumbled.

            Curt smiled, and kissed him.  “So write something fast and easy.  Go ahead and give him that sequel,” he suggested, with another kiss.  “Start out by talking about how Alexander’s career never recovered from him showing up on stage that fucking high, and rumour had it that he and Ruddy had broken up again—permanently—within a year.  Then you go to your new lead, a handsome reporter in his late twenties, looking to do a ‘where is he now’ story about Alexander for the tenth anniversary of the concert that ruined his career.”

            “Sounds like a lot of repetition from the original book,” Arthur pointed out.  Or a lot of contradiction of it, if he wanted to correct all his earlier mistakes…

            “Skip over the parts the audience already knows, and fill them in with flashbacks to how much Ruddy and Alexander meant to the reporter when he was a teenager,” Curt suggested, with an impish grin.  “Then when he finds Ruddy, you can finally reveal that he’s the one who shared that beautiful night on the rooftop ten years earlier.”

            Arthur kissed him.  “I think I could write that quickly, all right,” he agreed, “but I still wonder if the fans wouldn’t hate me for it.”

            Another kiss, so intense that Arthur could almost feel his lips bruising under Curt’s touch.  “Who cares what _they_ think?  _I_ want to read it.”

            “Okay, then.”

            Of course, as fully aroused as Arthur was, he felt sure that nothing he said should be considered binding—he’d have said anything to move away from talking and feel Curt inside him again.  If he got home and felt he shouldn’t—couldn’t—write that sequel, he wouldn’t really be breaking his word.  Curt probably didn’t actually care one way or the other, after all.

 

***

 

            Returning to his basement flat Sunday morning had been a misery, but Arthur had a story due by mid-afternoon, and he hadn’t even started it yet, so he hadn’t had a choice.  The story was a rote piece that was quickly enough written, and he was back from turning it in at the _Herald_ offices well before six.

            As his computer was booting up, Arthur turned on the television.  A news programme was on, showing footage of President Reynolds addressing a rally of his supporters, and lambasting the media for their ‘liberal bias’ in alleging that the Committee for Cultural Renewal was censoring Hollywood.  Arthur shut the telly off again immediately.  Alleging?  It was a solid fact!  The Committee for Cultural Renewal had re-edited dozens of movies, and suppressed at least half a dozen more; in fact, when the committee first went into operation in 1982, it immediately prevented the release of two movies, _Personal Best_ and _Making Love_ , calling them subversive attempts to undermine society by destroying monogamous marriage.  Copies of both movies had escaped the committee and been shown in Canada and Europe, and every report that Arthur had heard said the same thing:  they were movies that attempted to portray homosexual love in the same normal, healthy light as heterosexual love.

            And as to Reynolds’ accusations of a ‘liberal bias’ in the media, Arthur would just like to know what media _he_ was looking at, because it certainly wasn’t the one in his own country!  All the newsreaders seemed to be madly in love with Reynolds, and the headlines of almost every paper in the nation were just so much wanking over how great he was.  If anyone wanted to criticise Reynolds, they had to sneak it into the subtext and hope the readers would notice it.  Unfortunately, Arthur wasn’t so good with sneaky subtext, and most of his criticisms got noticed and cut long before the paper went to print.

            Given the mood Arthur was left in by what he’d seen on the telly, he shouldn’t have opened up the two weekend papers that had been languishing unread while he dallied with Curt yesterday, and frantically wrote his article today.  He should have let them alone.  But he didn’t.

            Thus he was greeted with a huge, nauseating photo spread of Tommy Stone posing with President Reynolds at a rally.

            “That bloody bastard…”

            How could any artist—anyone who had the temerity even to _claim_ to be an artist—have the gall to support someone who actively suppressed artistic expression?

            Any doubts Arthur had been feeling melted away.  He didn’t care anymore what the fans would think.  Not his own—very few—fans, not Curt’s fans, not Brian’s fans, and he actively _wanted_ to enrage Tommy Stone’s fans!

            The only question in his mind, as he sat down to write, was what names to assign to the new characters.  The name for the teenage-fan-turned-journalist was only relevant in that the reader would be seeing a lot of it.  But the name for Alexander Dupres’ new identity would have to be _very_ carefully chosen.

            Arthur didn’t want there to be any doubts who he was talking about.


	6. Chapter Five

            By the time Friday night rolled around and then went away again, Curt had gone through a veritable rainbow of reactions.  The first few times he’d called Arthur and not gotten any answer, he’d just thought it was bad timing.  After a couple more tries, he started getting annoyed by it.  When he finally _did_ get Arthur to answer the phone, Arthur didn’t want to talk to him, because he was “too busy workin’ to talk right now.”  What the fuck?!  Was he just brushing Curt aside like everyone else?  What the hell had that whole fucking weekend been about if he didn’t actually give a shit about Curt?  When the rage wore off, Curt started to think that maybe Arthur was scared.  If he hadn’t had sex in six years, he’d probably forgotten what it was like to be in a relationship.  Maybe he’d never even had a serious boyfriend, and he was afraid of fucking it up, and thought it was better to get it over with fast, before he could get hurt.

            But by Saturday morning, Curt was getting worried.  It was obvious to him that “too busy” was an excuse, a lie to make him shut up and go away.  But what if Curt’s apartment really _was_ bugged?  He was always saying it was, but what if he wasn’t just being paranoid?  What if those fuckers had heard that conversation and thought Curt had encouraged Arthur to tell the world where Brian really was right now, instead of just to write about how good it was to have sex with Curt?  Maybe they’d gone to Arthur’s place and threatened him—maybe even at gunpoint!—to keep him from writing that book, to keep him quiet.

            Curt couldn’t stand by and allow that to happen.  He wasn’t sure what he could do, exactly, but there had to be _something_.  Starting with offering a shoulder to cry on.  Or a cock to suck on, or whatever Arthur needed to make him feel better.

            Given what kind of neighborhood Arthur lived in, Curt decided he’d better take the subway rather than drive.  Might not have a car anymore if he left it parked on the street overnight in a place like that.  As he walked up to the door of the building, Curt was annoyed to see it didn’t have an intercom.  That the door was locked didn’t surprise him—in fact, he’d have been worried if it _wasn’t_ —but he wasn’t sure how to get in if he couldn’t let Arthur know he was there.

            While he was standing at the door uncertainly, a man with a large beer gut—emphasized by the fact that he was only wearing a grimy, formerly white tank top over his stained jeans—opened the door and stepped out to look at him.  “You don’t look like the exterminator,” he said.

            “I’m here to see a friend,” Curt told him.  “But there’s no intercom.”

            “Yeah, right.  What’s your friend’s name?  Which apartment does she live in?”

            “Arthur Stuart.  Uh…he didn’t tell me his room number, actually…”  He’d only given Curt the street address at all because Curt had insisted on driving him home last Sunday, to save him a little time.

            “Didn’t think that guy _had_ friends,” the man in the tank top said, shaking his head.  “What is he, some kind of teacher?”

            “Reporter.”

            “Eh, close enough.  He’s in room B4.  Do me a favor and remind him his rent’s due on Monday,” the man said, stepping aside so Curt could get into the building.

            If that was what the landlord looked like, Curt did not have high expectations for the apartment building itself.  As he walked down the hall, he found himself remembering the abandoned building in Detroit where he had spent a couple of months as a squatter until he could find the money to pay for a real place to live.  There was a thin accumulation of trash here and there along most of the walls, and roaches scurried from one pile of trash to another at the vibrations of Curt’s approach.  In a few places, the peeling wallpaper had been tagged with graffiti, which had been painted over again in a color that attempted to match the wallpaper, without actually coming close to it.  Whoever did the painting had been careful to use as little paint as possible, so Curt could still make out what the graffiti had looked like.  A few gang signs and racist epithets, mostly.

            The elevator door was splotched with rust.  Curt did _not_ want to get in that elevator, but he didn’t see any signs of a stairwell nearby, so he didn’t think he had much choice.  After pressing the down button, he noticed that someone had scratched a limerick into the drywall near the button.  The first line read “There once was a fag from Nantucket…”

            Curt pressed the button again, doing his best not to read the rest of the limerick.

            Why the fuck was Arthur living in such a shithole?  This was actually _worse_ than that building in Detroit.  And that had been so bad that Curt hadn’t been able to stand it for more than a few months:  he’d actually gotten to the point where he’d have preferred to go back to his parents and their electric torture machine than stay there a minute longer, and he’d only been what, fifteen, sixteen?

            He tried to let himself be distracted by the horrifying realization that he didn’t actually remember just how old he’d been when he ran away from home.  Anything to keep from thinking about someone as pretty and potentially fragile as Arthur trying to live in a place like this.

            The elevator creaked like a son of a bitch, and moved as slow and jerky as someone trying to swim through Jell-o.  Didn’t smell very good, either.

            But once Curt stepped off into the basement hallway, things looked a little less bleak.  There was no trash, and no sign of any half-heartedly painted-over graffiti.  The wallpaper was still ugly and peeling, but it looked a lot more livable down here.  Smelled like mildew, though.

            The doors in the basement seemed closer together than the doors upstairs, and B4 was one of the ones furthest from the elevator.  Given what that elevator sounded like, that was probably the better alternative.

            Before knocking, Curt put his ear up against the door and listened.  Just in case.  He could faintly hear music playing.  That didn’t necessarily mean that those goons weren’t in there; they tended to be pretty fucking quiet.  He’d have looked through the peephole to see if he could get an idea what was going on inside, only it didn’t have one.

            No point in stalling further:  Curt knocked on the door.  After a few seconds, he could hear footsteps approaching.  “The rent’s not due ‘til Monday!” Arthur’s voice was saying, even as the door started opening.  The door was soon stopped by a rusty chain, but it was open enough to let Curt see Arthur’s surprised face on the other side.  A smile soon spread over his lips.  “Curt?  What are you doin’ here?”

            “What do you _think_ I’m doing here?!” Curt snapped back.  After he’d gone and made Curt so worried, how _dare_ he act all innocent about it?!

            “Uh…I…oh…uh, hang on.”  Arthur shut the door again, and Curt could hear the chain being removed before the door was opened again.

            Curt walked into the apartment as soon as the door was open.  He wanted to look for signs that someone had been there.  Surely those guys would have left behind some kind of proof if they were threatening Arthur into silence.  He lost track of what he was looking for pretty quickly.  The place was so fucking tiny!  No windows, beat up old office furniture that looked like it had been thrown out in the ‘50s—except the chair the printer was sitting on, which looked like it was a ‘60s garage sale reject—and a mattress held up on cinder blocks.  Who the fuck could live like this?  “What the fuck is this?” was all Curt could say.

            “This is my flat,” Arthur sighed.  “What are you doin’ here?”

            “Really?  That’s all you fucking have to say?!”

            “What?  What are you so upset about?”

            “After you brushed me off with the same ‘I’m too busy’ bullshit you’ve been giving everyone for the last six years, how can I not be upset?!” Curt demanded.

            Arthur just stared at him for at least thirty seconds.  “Curt, I ‘ave to write a ‘ole bleedin’ _novel_ by the 15th!  On top of at least three or four articles a week for the _‘Erald_!  I don’t even  ‘ave time to _breathe_!”  He shook his head.  “Once I get the first draft off to my editor, then I’ll ‘ave plenty of time.  It’s not even two weeks…”

            Curt wasn’t sure if he was angry or relieved.  Arthur was treating him like he was no better than everyone else, but on the other hand it looked like no one was targeting him.  So maybe…maybe it was okay.  He’d just have to remind Arthur that he didn’t have to push so hard…

            “You sound pretty stressed out,” Curt commented, fishing a cigarette out of his pocket.

            “Of course I’m bloody stressed.  And please don’t smoke in my flat.  The smoke’ll still be lingerin’ six months from now.  There’s no ventilation down here.”

            Curt grimaced, and put the cigarette back again  “So you need to relax.”

            “I don’t have time to relax.”

            Curt leaned in and kissed Arthur.  “You can spare a few minutes.  And afterwards, you can print out what you’ve got of your novel, and I can have a look at it.”

            Arthur sighed, and shook his head.  “I really don’t ‘ave time, but…I guess it can’t hurt too much.”  He turned back to his computer, and started hitting buttons.  The printer started making an ugly grinding noise.

            “What the fuck…?”

            “It takes a while to print that many pages,” Arthur explained.  “And it doesn’t like to do much else while it’s printin’.  So if you really want to read what I’ve got, then I guess I’ll ‘ave no _choice_ but to wait for the printer to be done.”

            “Yeah, but that noise…”  Fucking while listening to that was not going to be much fun.

            “I’ll turn on some music,” Arthur said.  There was a cheap plastic record player on the desk near the computer.  “What do you want to listen to?” he asked, even as he started taking off the record currently on the player.

            “What’s wrong with that one?” Curt asked.  “If you were listening to it while you were writing—”

            Arthur showed him the sleeve with a lopsided grin.  It was “Danger Zone”.  “Unless you _want_ to listen to yourself…?”

            Curt coughed.  “Maybe not.”  Though it was hard to think just who he _did_ want to listen to while fucking Arthur.  After all, it got awkward if he actually knew the person doing the singing.  “You, uh, you got anything non-vocal?”  That would have to be less uncomfortable.

            “I think so.”  Arthur opened up one of the gray lockers and started rooting through it.  Why anyone would want discarded school lockers in their bedroom was beyond Curt.  Better to stack shit right on the floor, he’d have thought.  “Guess I sold most of them, but I’ve still got this one,” Arthur said, withdrawing an LP.  It was the soundtrack to _Dr. No_.  “Will this do?”

            “Sure.”  Actually, that seemed pretty perfect.  James Bond was fiction’s most iconic womanizer.  How better to subvert his whole misguided social type than to listen to the soundtrack of one of his movies while fucking a beautiful man?

            As Arthur put on the record, Curt stepped up close behind him, and started easing his shirt up, sliding his hands up underneath it, fondling his smooth chest, and playing with the small, hard nipples.  Arthur laughed before pulling his shirt over his head, and turning around to kiss Curt with far more confidence than he had ten years ago.


	7. Chapter Six

            Arthur was still floating in the beautiful aftermath of his orgasm when he felt Curt let go of him and get out of bed.  “Where do you want me to throw this?” Curt asked.

            “Throw…?” Arthur repeated, not quite ready to form a coherent sentence yet.

            “The condom.”

            “Oh.”  It took him too long to think about it.  “There’s a bin in the loo.  In there…I guess?”

            Curt walked the two or three steps to the door, then vanished through it.  While he was in there, Arthur did his best to sit up and bring his brain back into order.  He was going to have to start writing again in a few minutes, after all.  It wouldn’t do to be such a mess.  “This thing’s wire mesh,” Curt’s voice said from around the corner.  “That’s no good.”

            “All I got,” Arthur assured him, leaning his back against the wall.  The chilly sensation of the concrete blocks helped to bring him back into himself.

            “You’d be fucked if you brought anyone down here, you know that?” Curt said, coming back into the room.

            Arthur laughed a lot more than he meant to.  “I thought I _was_ just fucked.”

            Curt sighed, and sat down beside him.  Arthur cuddled up, wanting a little warmth to make up for the cold wall.  “Seriously, you should at least have a trash can that’s good for handling a used condom.”

            Arthur chuckled.  “You know when my first time with a condom was?”

            “How could I?”

            “Friday.”

            Curt looked at him with concern for a moment, then laughed.  “Yeah, I guess that makes sense, if it’s been six years since you got laid.  I thought you said you had slept with some girls, too, though.”

            “I was eighteen.  No bloody way was I usin’ condoms.”

            Curt laughed.  “So back in London somewhere, nine year old Arthur Jr. might be running around, confusing everyone by being too pretty to be a boy, and too boyish to be a girl.”

            “I think they’d ‘ave told me if that’d happened,” Arthur chuckled.  “I know for a fact Sally didn’t get pregnant; her mum would ‘ave mentioned that when I was at her place.”

            “You hung out with your ex-girlfriend’s mother?”

            “Just for one night.”

            Curt started laughing.  “I had no idea you had it in you!” he exclaimed.

            “No, on her sofa!  Not—I was hidin’ out, not—stop laughin’!”

            Curt was still chuckling, but he leaned in and kissed Arthur despite that.  “You’re feeling better now, right?  Less stressed?”

            “Yeah.  Thanks; I really did need it.”  He didn’t have the time for it, but it had definitely been worth it.

            Curt smiled at him, and stroked his hair a bit, then suddenly yawned.  “Sorry…”

            “It’s okay,” Arthur assured him.  “You can stretch out and get some kip if you want.”

            “What are you gonna be doing?”

            “Gettin’ back to work,” Arthur said, getting up off the bed again.  He didn’t have time to fool around indefinitely.  That book wasn’t going to write itself.  And he had barely started work on his next article, too.

            “You’ll get stressed out again.”

            “That’s a given,” Arthur agreed, as he started putting his clothes back on.  Writing in the buff would be counterproductive in a room as cold as his flat even under normal circumstances.  With Curt sitting behind him, it would be even more so.

            Once Arthur was dressed again, he glanced over at the bed, and saw that Curt had already stretched out and fallen asleep.  Envious of that freedom, Arthur tore the end of the paper out of the printer, and carefully re-folded it so that the first page was on top.  Setting the stack next to the head of the bed for Curt, he sat down, put his glasses on, and took a moment to remind himself where he was in the story.

            Right, Phil was in the midst of interviewing Jane, who was giving a very different perspective on Alexander’s romance with Ruddy than _Celebrity_ had.  But it was important not to outright contradict the previous book…

            After a while, Arthur could hear Curt grumbling something about how “fucking cold” it was in there, and he was faintly aware of the sound of Curt putting his own clothes back on.  Then the room went quiet again—apart from the clicking of the keys under Arthur’s fingers—and he wasn’t sure if Curt had gone back to sleep, or if he was now reading the first thirty-something pages of the new book.

            He had completely lost track of time when he heard Curt start reacting to the book.  “What the fuck is this…?”

            Shite.  Arthur had worried that maybe Curt wouldn’t approve of his exact methods, but there hadn’t really been a good chance to run the idea past him first.  He had planned to wait and do that after the first draft was in Mitch’s hands.  There were always second drafts, after all…

            “It’s just a first draft,” Arthur said, trying not to let his voice waver.  “It’ll be full of errors.”

            “You’re not seriously thinking of exposing him, are you?”

            Arthur’s fingers stopped moving as his eyes slid shut.  “That’s my plan, yes.”

            “Are you fucking insane?!”

            Arthur took his glasses off again and turned to look at Curt.  He looked a lot angrier than Arthur had expected.  “What would you ‘ave me do, then?  You can’t seriously want him to just get away with what he’s doin’?!”

            “Do you have any idea what those guys will do to you if you print this?!” Curt demanded, throwing the partial manuscript down on the floor.

            “By the time they find out, it’ll be too late.”

            “Are you really that naïve?”

            Arthur shook his head.  “How do you think they’d find out?  I don’t know who ‘those guys’ you’re referrin’ to are, but if they’re protectin’ Tommy Stone, they’ve got to either work for him or the Committee for Cultural Renewal.  Probably the latter, given they were threatenin’ you and Mandy.  That bein’ the case, there’s no way they’d read gay romance novels.  They’d only find out about it after word of mouth passed it around from the gay community to the straight community.  By the time they found out, thousands would already know, and it’d be too late to silence the story.”

            “Idiot.  You think they’re not watching your career?”

            “Why would they be?  They don’t know who I am.  And if you think they’re watchin’ me because I was investigatin’ Brian for that story…well, they don’t know that Arthur Stuart and Arthur King are the same person, do they?”

            Curt grimaced.  “How do you think _I_ knew that book of yours?”

            “You said someone gave it to you, didn’t you?  That people were always givin’ you those kind of books.”

            “Yeah, and do you think Brian’s handlers were any less likely to make _him_ aware of them?  Do you have any _idea_ how obsessive that new manager of his is about him?!”

            “Mandy had some words to say about her, yes,” Arthur told him, with a smile.

            “Then you don’t know the half of it,” Curt replied, shaking his head.  “Between her and those committee gorillas, every publishing house that’s ever printed one of those books is gonna be under constant surveillance.  They’ll know you’re trying to expose him long before it ever hits the presses.”

            “I think you’re bein’ a little paranoid.”

            “I’m not.”

            “Curt…”

            “Trying to print this would be suicide,” Curt insisted.

            “I can’t back down from this,” Arthur told him.  “People need to know the truth.”

            “Why?!  Were you really so traumatised by what he did that you feel you _need_ to ruin him ten years later?!”

            “Traumatised…?  Curt, he’s supportin’ a totalitarian regime!  Every time Reynolds wants to tighten the noose, he has Tommy Stone get up on the stage and do a little dance to distract the ‘ole bleedin’ country, and it _works_!  But once people know the truth, they’ll see what Reynolds is doin’.  Exposin’ Tommy’s secret is the best—maybe the _only_ —way to pull Reynolds down before ‘e can permanently take over.”

            “Are you listening to yourself?  You’re talking about stopping a runaway train with your face!  It’s not gonna work.  It’s just going to get your face splattered all over the train.”

            Arthur sighed.  “I’m sorry you think so,” he said, turning back to face the computer again.  “But I ‘ave to do this.”

            “Fucking moron.”

            There was a moment of silence, then Arthur heard the door to his flat being slammed shut.  He knew he should just accept it and keep going.  If there was even the slightest bit of truth to what Curt was saying, then it was better for them not to see each other.  That way Curt wouldn’t be in any danger.  But…

            Arthur got to his feet and ran out after Curt, catching up to him as he waited for the lift.  “Curt, please, wait!”

            “Unless you’re gonna give up that stupid idea, I have nothing more to say to you.”

            “But…it was your idea to—“

            Curt turned on him, his face so contorted with rage that it was hard to recognise him.  “I never said jack shit about putting anything about what Brian’s doing now into your book!  I told you to write about _us_ , not _him_!”

            Arthur found himself smiling despite the situation, and reached one hand tentatively towards Curt’s face.  “Are you…jealous?”

            “Don’t flatter yourself!”  Curt slapped his hand away.  “For all I know, those motherfuckers have my apartment bugged!  They’ll think I put this stupid fucking idea in your head!  You’re not just trying to get yourself squashed like a bug—you’re trying to take me with you!”

            “I think if that was the case, they’d ‘ave done something by now.”

            “I don’t plan on taking that chance.”  The lift doors began to creak open.  “If you ever want to see me again, you’ll take all that shit out and just write the empty fuck-fest your editor wanted in the first place.”

            Had Arthur said that was what his editor wanted?  He couldn’t remember saying so.  Maybe he had.  Or maybe he hadn’t.  It wasn't hard to guess that was what his editor wanted, in any event.  That didn't matter.  All that mattered was that Curt was actively trying to prevent him from telling the truth.  Trying to protect the lie.  “Then, in the end, you still prefer Brian,” he concluded sadly.  Of course he did.  Who wouldn’t?  “You’d choose him over me.”

            “I prefer to _live_ ,” Curt snapped as he stepped into the lift.  “I’m choosing _myself_.  You don’t really think having a pretty face and being a decent lay is enough to make me want to sign a suicide pact with you, do you?”

            “I…”  Arthur didn’t know how to reply to that.  All he could do was watch silently as the lift doors slowly slid shut again.  The lift began to groan its way back up to the ground floor, carrying Curt out of his life.

            He tried to tell himself that this was for the best.

            If the Committee for Cultural Renewal really was going to want vengeance on him for exposing Tommy Stone’s secret, then it was good that he not be associated with Curt in any way.  Anything tying him to Curt might drag Curt into trouble, too.

            He knew that, but it was hard to make his heart accept it.

            Arthur was crying by the time he went back into his flat and shut the door.

            As he sat down in front of his computer again, he let out a sad chuckle.  At least this had solved his conundrum about how to end the book.


	8. Chapter Seven

            Arthur was up early the morning of the 15th.  He printed out two copies of his manuscript, and placed them side by side in his satchel, then left for work, the same as any other day.  As he was leaving for lunch, he warned Lou that he’d be running some errands across town, and probably wouldn’t be back for several hours, but he’d stay late to make up for it.

            His first stop was a bank about halfway between the _Herald_ offices and the publisher’s.  He’d already made the appointment, so he was able to get the account set up and one copy of his manuscript locked in a safety deposit box in no time.  While he was at it, he left Curt’s pin in the safety deposit box as well, just in case.  Then he stopped at his lawyer’s office.  Some years ago, Arthur had interviewed the man about a subway accident he’d witnessed, and after the interview the chap had convinced Arthur that it was vital he have a will, just in case he should get killed in a similar accident.  He had probably only been taking advantage of the situation to gain a new client, but his logic hadn't been wrong, and just now Arthur was glad that he had already written his will.  It wasn’t the most proper addendum to a will, but Arthur was able to leave the key to the safe deposit box, to be given to Curt Wild—and only to Curt Wild—in the event that anything untoward should happen to Arthur.

            Then he finally went to the publisher’s, and handed over the manuscript to Mitch, who of course lectured him on his lack of punctuality for cutting it so very near the deadline.

            Back at his desk at the _Herald_ , Arthur waited until everyone else had left for the day before getting out some notepaper and writing a quick letter to Curt.  Mostly, the letter was “I’m sorry” said in a dozen different ways.  At the end of the letter, he wanted to write “I love you,” but it didn’t feel right.  They barely knew each other, after all; the sum total of the time they had spent together was only about 48 hours, and more of it had been spent sleeping than anything else.  Only the most shallow kind of love could form on such a basis.  How could he say it, knowing it would make Curt think he was shallow as well as foolish?

            Eventually, he decided to write “You’ll always be more important to me than you can know,” in its place.  It felt a bit more true, somehow.

            On his way out of the office—three hours late leaving, almost a record, even for him—Arthur put the letter in the nearest post box.

            Despite certain lingering fears of shady government enforcers waiting to arrest or kill him, nothing out of the ordinary happened until several hours after Arthur got home from work the next day, when the phone rang.

            “Are you out of your fucking mind?!” Mitch demanded, as soon as Arthur answered the phone.

            “You don’t like it, then.”  Arthur had rather known he wouldn’t.

            “The middle part is good.  Mostly.  But come on, Arthur!  ‘Johnny Rock’?  Seriously?  I know it’s just a joke, but what if some of Tommy Stone’s people see it?  They won’t think it’s funny.  They’ll think you’re accusing him of some pretty nasty shit.”

            “They won’t see it,” Arthur assured him.  “And anyway I think Tommy Stone’s probably used to being called much worse.”  He used to be called ‘a bleeding fruit’ and worse back in the ‘70s.

            “That’s as may be,” Mitch sighed.  “I’ll let you have it, I suppose.  Probably no harm in it.  Slade’s and Wild’s people have never sued us; why would Stone’s be any different?”  A naïve question at best.  “What I _won’t_ allow is that fucking ending.”

            “It’s what felt right.”

            “Felt right?!  Arthur, you’re supposed to give the readers a goddamn happy ending!”

            “It’s _got_ a happy ending,” Arthur insisted.  “Ruddy and Alexander patch up their differences and get back together again.  Wasn’t that what you wanted in the first place?”

            “That’d be great, if the book was about the two of them.  But it _wasn’t_!  It’s a fucking romance novel.  You can’t have the hero die at the end!”

            “Ruddy’s the hero.”

            “He doesn’t even show up until halfway through the book!”

            “A third of the way through,” Arthur corrected.

            “I don’t give a shit how far in it is.  He’s not the fucking hero.  The reporter’s the hero, and you can’t fucking kill him at the end!”

            “But this is more realistic…”

            “What part of ‘romance novel’ do you not understand?!  It’s not supposed to be realistic!  It’s supposed to be two sexy guys fucking like jackrabbits without having to deal with an uncaring, homophobic world.  You can’t write a romance novel and then try to tack on an artistic ending.  End it the way you started it.”

            “But—”

            “You’re gonna write me a new ending, or I’m suing you for breach of contract!”  Mitch hung up on him without another word.

            Arthur sighed, and turned his computer on.

            So much for the ending that reflected how his current reality felt.

            He’d have to figure out the best time to change it.  The best _way_ to change it to what Mitch wanted without altering the most important core of events.  In the novel as written, the enforcers for the Committee for Cultural Renewal, angered at losing their front man, decide to punish the men responsible for exposing Johnny’s secret.  At a press conference, they target Ruddy, but Phil sees the gun, and pushes him out of the way, taking the bullet in his place, giving up his life for his lover.  After everything’s over, Alexander—no longer the false Johnny, but returned to his true self—comes to comfort Ruddy over his loss, and admits that he had long wanted to escape from the hell he had created for himself.  Additionally, knowing that Ruddy had come so close to being shot had made him realise that he truly still loved Ruddy after all this time, and of course Ruddy had never stopped loving Alexander, so there was the happy ending, even if it wasn’t for the couple who had made up most of the sex scenes in the book.

            The simplest solution was probably for Phil to be wounded, but not killed.  Then Alexander isn’t taking advantage of Ruddy’s sorrow, but genuinely terrified by how near his true love came to being killed.  There would be a painful scene where Ruddy had to choose between his true love and his new love, but of course he would choose his true love, and Phil would understand, because he truly loved Ruddy and wanted him to be happy.

            Hopefully, Mitch would accept that as an ending.

 

***

 

            After he got his author’s proof copy of _Infamy_ , Arthur spent a long time poring over it for mistakes, much more carefully than he had for any of his other books, even _Celebrity_.  As soon as he was done with it, he took another lunch break to retrieve the key to his safe deposit box, so he could put the proof in with the manuscript.  While he was at it, he left a note to Curt, explaining that his editor had forced him to change the ending to be slightly more upbeat.  He couldn’t say which he would prefer Curt to read, so he didn’t even try.  Chances were that Curt wouldn’t be willing to read either anyway.

            Why would he?

 

***

 

            _Infamy_ was announced to the few gay bookstores in mid-June.  The week after the announcement, Arthur went to his favourite one to see if there had been any reaction.  The shopkeep had a slate behind the counter on which posted a chalk list of upcoming titles the way a pub might announce its daily specials.  _Infamy_ had been placed prominently on the list, billed as a “sequel to _Celebrity_.”

            “I thought we might be seeing you in here soon,” the shopkeep said, chuckling as Arthur approached.  “First time you’ve done a sequel.”

            “The timing felt right,” Arthur said, trying to smile.  “Has anyone seemed interested?”

            “Other than me?  No one’s said anything, but I did sell my last copies of _Celebrity_ after that went up on the board.  Oh, you know what else I sold?  Last copy of _Route of Discovery_.”

            “Really?”  While it was his second most popular book, that still rather surprised Arthur.  Maybe Route 66 nostalgia was having a resurgence?  There _were_ rumours it was going to be removed from the highway system soon.  Perhaps that had revived interest in the subject.  “To whom?”

            “Good-looking guy, in a scruffy sort of way.  Unkempt blond hair in a little ponytail.”

            Arthur tried to keep his face passive.  He knew the person who came in here and bought one of his books wasn’t Curt.  That would be absurd.  Whoever he was, he just had similar hair.  There had to be thousands of men who answered that description in New York City.  Maybe only a few hundred of them were gay, but even so, that left a large number of other men who were much more likely purchasers of his work.  There was no chance whatsoever that Curt would want to buy one of his books.  Curt never wanted anything to do with him ever again…

            “Someone you know?”

            Arthur looked back up at the shopkeep uncomfortably.  “I doubt it,” he said, trying to laugh.  “But I used to know someone like that.”

            “An ex?”

            “ _The_ ex.”

            “Yeah, I know what you mean,” the shopkeep sighed.  “We’ve all got one like that, don’t we?  That one guy you just can’t get over, no matter how many years pass…”

            Arthur nodded.  It was just a pity that his ‘one true ex’ was still hung up on his own ‘one true ex’…  “Did he say anything?”

            “Nah.  Didn’t want to make eye contact, either.  Probably in the closet.  Or maybe one of those guys who’s hiding it from themselves even more than from the rest of the world.  I told him it was a good choice, though.  Real sweet stuff.”

            Arthur sighed.  ‘Sweet’ hadn’t really been his aim, though he wasn’t entirely sure what _had_ been.  He’d just caught some old ‘60s show on the telly about a couple of good-looking blokes driving down Route 66 together, and thought it would be improved if they were best mates who realised in the course of their journey that they really wanted to be so much more than that…

            “You really don’t like it, do you?”

            “It’s not that.  I just wish I’d had someone else to help me write it.  I’ve never been further west than Philadelphia.”  To be able to write the descriptions, he’d had to borrow photographs from Lou, who had actually driven Route 66 all the way to Los Angeles back in the ‘60s with his wife and kids.

            “Maybe this new book will sell well enough that you could have a book signing tour,” the shopkeep laughed.

            “Maybe you’ve forgotten what kind of books I write,” Arthur countered.

            “At least let us hold a signing here for once.”

            “Not a chance.  What if one of my co-workers found out?”

            The shopkeep shook his head with a deep sigh.  “After some of your stories about being in the flashy London party set, I keep forgetting you’re basically in the closet yourself.”

            “It’s more like being off the market.”

            “You can only be off the market if you belong to someone already.”

            “I do,” Arthur said sadly.  “He just isn’t interested in taking possession…”

            The shopkeep patted his arm reassuringly.  “Don’t worry.  You’re a good-looking guy.  You’ll find someone else.”

            “I don’t want to.”


	9. Chapter Eight

            Though Arthur had tried to push Mitch for an even earlier release, _Infamy_ ’s early October release was actually ridiculously fast.  In fact, a “rush fee” was being deducted from his sales for the book, which would probably reduce his take per copy from the usual 5¢ to a penny or less.  But if it would have any impact at all on the election, then it would be worth the complete lack of financial remuneration.  There wasn’t much point to his getting paid, anyway:  what did he have to spend it on?

            The release day was marked by absolutely nothing.  No one noticed it.  That was typical of his releases, of course, but some part of Arthur, deep down, had hoped that this time something _would_ happen.

            And something _did_ eventually happen, but not until three days later.  Then a letter was couriered to him at his flat, from a very expensive law firm.  It arrived first thing in the morning, before he had even left for work, and informed him that if he did not have his book pulled from the shelves, nationwide, within the next 48 hours, he would be sued by the Tommy Stone legal machine.  It should have left him terrified of ending up bankrupt and in debtor’s prison, but instead it left him grinning as he called Mitch to see if the publishing house was under a similar threat.

            The whole ride to work, Arthur couldn’t keep the smile off his face.

            They had played right into his hands.

            And on the best possible day, considering his assigned article wasn’t due until late this afternoon, and he’d already finished it.

 

***

 

**Local Author Sued Over Romance Novel**

            Few celebrity romances in the 1970s attracted more notoriety than the one between bisexual pop singers Brian Slade and Curt Wild.  The affair between the British Slade—who was at the time married to an American woman—and the American Wild began early in the summer of 1972, and lasted until January of 1974.  Their break-up is often cited as the probable cause of the hoax in which Slade faked his own assassination on stage on February 5, 1974.  After the revelation the following June that Slade had not been killed, dozens of books began to see print, fictionalizing their affair.  Few did anything to smokescreen the characters’ original identities beyond changing their names.  Some of the books were legitimate fiction—in fact, one of them, _The Cost of Fame_ , by B. T. Anderson, is a true masterpiece—but most were cheap romance novels, filled with lurid descriptions of the two stars’ erotic encounters.

            Being quick-and-dirty attempts to capitalize on the fame of the affair, these books’ releases had slowed to a trickle by 1975, and ceased altogether midway through 1976, until the fifth anniversary of the break-up saw the release of a new novel on the subject, _Celebrity_ , by New York-based author Arthur King.  Aside from the timing, there was little about this book to differentiate it from all the other gay romances inspired by the Slade/Wild affair, and it caused no litigation, just as the others had not, despite that King was just as transparent about the origin of his characters as all the other authors had been.

            This February was the tenth anniversary of Slade’s shooting stunt, and earlier this week, Arthur King released a sequel to _Celebrity_.  In the new novel, _Infamy_ , a reporter is given the assignment of locating the Slade-analog, Alexander Dupres, to see where he is ten years after his career came crashing to an end.  At about the mid-way point of the novel, he uncovers the truth that Dupres had changed his name to Johnny Rock, and is now a conservative icon, working closely with President Thompson’s Cultural Repair Commission.

            Yesterday morning, Mr. King was contacted by lawyers representing Tommy Stone, demanding that all copies of _Infamy_ be removed from shelves and destroyed, alleging that the character of Johnny Rock was infringing upon Mr. Stone’s personal rights.  If these demands are not met, they will sue Mr. King on Mr. Stone’s behalf, claiming character defamation and “gross accusations of iniquity.”  Mr. King was not available for comment, but his lawyers insist that his work falls well under the protective cover of parody.

            Polyandrous Press, the publishing house behind both _Celebrity_ and _Infamy_ , did not receive a similar demand from Mr. Stone.  Instead, they received notice from the Committee for Cultural Renewal, stating that their business was under investigation, and would be shut down within the year on charges of “corruption of the innocent and the spread of grotesque iniquity.”  Polyandrous’ editor, Mitch la Grange, gave _The Herald_ an exclusive interview about these accusations.

            “Who could we be corrupting?” he asked.  “No one would ever buy our books who wasn’t already gay.  Closing us down won’t stop the spread of our books.  How many homosexual men are there in New York City alone?  Do they think we don’t want to read about people like ourselves?  Of course we do!  And if there aren’t proper publishers releasing the books we need, then we’ll go back to distributing photocopied manuscripts, passing them from hand to hand in gay bars, men’s rooms, wherever two gay men meet.  They _ought_ to be thanking us for printing these books and preventing the need for those photocopies being passed hand to unwashed hand, passing God-only-knows how many diseases along with them.  I’m not bowing to those ****ers.  We’re here, we’re queer, we’re staying, and there’s not one damn thing they can do about it.”

            Neither Mr. Stone nor the representatives of the Committee for Cultural Renewal were available for comment as of press time.

 

***

 

            Lou lowered the draft with an arched eyebrow.  “So is that what you wanted all those old photos of Route 66 for?” he asked.

            Arthur couldn’t meet the older man’s gaze.  This was possibly the most humiliating way he could ever have chosen to out himself.

            Lou chuckled, and lightly patted him on the shoulder.  “I’m not surprised,” he said.  “My wife said she could tell the instant she met you.”

            “What?!  Am I—am I that obvious?!”  He’d always thought he seemed fairly normal since arriving in America.  A lot of hard work had gone into fading into the background.

            “Women can tell these things,” Lou assured him.  Arthur wasn’t so sure about that; women had tried to chat him up in the past.  “Now, about this story…”

            “You will print it, won’t you?”

            “Tell me why.”

            “What?”

            “Why do you want to tell the world about it?” Lou asked.  “A way to lose less dignity when you pull the books from the shelves?”

            “I’m not capitulatin’.  The books are stayin’ where they are.”

            “You’re trying to boost sales, then.”

            “No.  I want people to know the truth,” Arthur told him.  “The one that’s in the subtext, not the text.”

            Lou frowned at the article.  “I see.  It’s risky.  You know that, right?”

            Arthur nodded.  “I knew that when I published the book in the first place.”  After he’d already sacrificed his relationship with the man he loved in exchange for the chance of exposing the truth, he wasn’t going to let anything stand in his way.

            Lou shook his head.  “It’s against my better judgment, but I’ll allow it.  However, I’m editing down this fellow’s speech.  Too many readers might feel threatened by it.”  Somehow, that didn’t surprise Arthur in the least.  “A general trim, in fact.  Cut out a little of the emotion.”

            “But I—”

            “I know, you tried to stay appropriately reserved, but you can’t help putting your excitement into your stories.  It’s one of the things that makes you good at this job, but sometimes it’s a liability.  Don’t worry, I won’t interfere with the heart of the story.”

            Arthur nodded.  “Any chance you could get it sent out over the wire to papers in other cities?”  The sooner the story could spread across the country, the better.

            Lou looked at him with surprise.  “I could talk to a few people,” he answered after a moment’s pause.  “Other cities with large gay populations would probably be interested in the story.  I’ll see what I can do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The bit in Mitch's speech about "we're here, we're queer" is not mine. I encountered that in a short story I read (actually from the '80s, or maybe it was from the '90s and set in the '80s) describing the chanting of protestors after a gay employee was fired from a store for being HIV positive. (I think that was what they were protesting. I know it was about a gay employee being fired, I'm just not sure what else was involved.) From the way the story handled it, I got the feeling that the protest was a real event, and that the line was therefore okay to use as period accuracy. I apologize if I was mistaken on any of these counts.


	10. Chapter Nine

            One of the many small edits Lou had made to the story was that he had replaced Arthur’s by-line with a Staff Reporter by-line.  Arthur was grateful to him for that:  imagine how easy it would have been for everyone—especially his co-workers—to figure out just where that scoop had come from if his name had been on it!

            Neither he nor Mitch had heard anything back yet from the Stone attorneys or the Committee for Cultural Renewal, but they did still have another twelve hours to comply, technically.  But Mitch had heard from several organisations that were determined to protect his rights, so hopefully Arthur hadn’t destroyed his publisher’s livelihood as well as possibly stuck his own neck out onto the chopping block.

            Still, when the phone rang at his flat late that night, it gave Arthur quite a start.  His hand may have been shaking a bit when he picked it up.  “Hello…?”

            “Why the fuck would you have ended it that way?”  His voice was so angry and loud that the line turned to static with every hard consonant.  But that didn’t matter, because it was _him_.

            “Curt…”  Arthur’s voice was probably too quiet to be heard.

            “Aren’t those books supposed to have a happy ending?”

            “It did have a happy ending,” Arthur insisted.  “Ruddy and Alexander get back together.”

            “And the fucking hero just disappears in the last chapter!  What the fuck kind of ending is that?  His boyfriend’s such a dick that he doesn’t even care the guy took a goddamn _bullet_ for him?!  Who’d be such an utter shit?”

            Arthur laughed sadly.  “Blame that on my editor.  He made me re-write the ending.  Originally, Phil died.”

            “Why would you write that?  Isn’t he _you_?”

            “You’re the one who gave me the idea.”

            There was silence from the other end of the line for almost a minute.  “That wasn’t what I was trying to do.  I wanted to talk you out of painting targets on both our foreheads.”

            “And you left me feelin’ like I’d already taken a bullet.”

            “Arthur…”  Curt was silent again for a few moments, then sighed deeply.  “I wasn’t exactly happy about it, either.”  Not very convincing from the one who did all the walking away.

            “I know,” Arthur lied.  What else was he going to say?

            “I’m sure as hell not happy about this ending, either.  You don’t actually think that’s what I want, do you?”

            “Isn’t it?”

            “No!”  Curt cleared his throat after the outburst.  “If I could have the old Brian back, maybe.  But he’s gone.  He’s not coming back:  he might as well really be dead.  I loved Brian, but Tommy Stone disgusts me.”

            “Yeah.”

            “You know, I think your editor must have been pretty pissed off by your new ending, too,” Curt continued.

            “He wasn’t happy, that’s true,” Arthur agreed.  “But I’m not sure how you’d know…?”

            “There’s a form on the last page.  You’re supposed to tear it out, fill it in, and send it back.  Saying what you thought of the ending.  There’s this checklist of the other endings it could have had.  If they get enough forms saying to change the ending, they’ll force you to re-write it, and they’ll send a copy at their own expense to everyone who voted in favour of the ending that got chosen.”

            “Bloody Norah!  They don’t mean their expense, they mean _mine_.  I’ll not see a penny from them ever again,” Arthur moaned.  “No, no, I’m overreacting.  Everyone will say they prefer the ending it’s got.  They want Ruddy and Alexander to be together.”

            “They won’t after reading that book.”

            Arthur sighed.  “Are you goin’ to send the form in?”

            “Already did.”  Arthur’s heart started beating wildly at the speed and certainty of the words.

            “What—what did you say the ending should be?”

            “Ruddy and Phil should stay together, and Alexander can go fuck himself.”

            If only that was _really_ how he felt!  Part of Arthur wanted to point out the hollowness of Curt’s words, but…for all he knew this was the last chance he’d ever have to talk to Curt.  He didn’t want it to end a second sooner than it had to.

            “I saw that article in the paper this morning, too,” Curt went on, after about a minute of silence from both of them.  “You wrote it, right?  But you don’t think that’s gonna help, do you?”

            “I’m hopin’ it will.  But I can’t know for sure.”

            They fell silent again, and all Arthur could hear was the creaking of the lift at the end of the hall, followed by the bickering voices of the couple who lived two doors down.

            “Arthur…I…”  Curt’s voice stopped almost before it began, and he inhaled deeply. Sounded a bit like he’d just lit a cigarette.  “I don’t know why, but…I…I guess you could say…I’ve…I’ve been thinking about you…a lot…especially lately…”

            “Even though I’m only a ‘decent’ lay?” Arthur asked, trying to keep himself calm.  Curt didn’t mean what he was saying.  How could he mean it?  It would only make the pain worse if he got his hopes up of anything more ever happening.

            “Did I really say that?”

            “You did.”

            “I’m sorry.  That’s completely below the belt.  And it’s not true.  You’re—you’re really good.”  A small chuckle.  “But you’re not the best, so don’t go putting on any airs.”

            “I wouldn’t dream of it.”  He might wish for it, but he wouldn’t waste a dream on it.

            Curt chuckled weakly.  “So…I…”  Another uncomfortable pause.  “I’d like to see you again.”

            “Really?”

            “Yeah.  A real…a real date.  Not just another hop in the sack.”

            “I’d like that,” Arthur agreed, feeling as though he might start shedding tears of joy any second.  “But aren’t you worried about repercussions anymore?”

            “If they were gonna silence either of us, they’d have done it by now.  And now that you’ve gone public with it, they’ll be accusing themselves if they try it.  If they were that stupid, they’d have fallen apart a long time ago.”


	11. Chapter Ten

            Arthur was more than a little flummoxed by Curt’s choice of restaurant.  It was hardly the sort of establishment he was used to frequenting, and he doubted Curt spent much time in such classy places, either.  It used to be rather trendy, but now it was quite stodgy.  Decidedly not the sort of place two men should go on a date.  And he was already uncomfortable before he even left his flat, because he’d forgotten to go back to the bank and pick up Curt’s pin, so he had to go without it.  Curt looked disappointed, but he didn’t say anything, and Arthur wasn’t sure if he should volunteer the information or not.  It was going to sound pathetic—even belittling—no matter how he phrased it.

            They were led to the very back of the restaurant, to a sheltered table, hidden away from most of the other patrons by a tall row of potted plants.  There were a few other tables that could see them, but they were all unoccupied at the moment, thankfully, and likely to remain that way if the look of disgust on the maître d’s face was any indication.

            Once they were alone, Arthur suddenly became unaccountably fidgety.  Why had Curt decided to take him to someplace so inappropriate?  It was the first time they’d seen each other in months, and he wanted to go somewhere that they wouldn’t be free to act like they were actually on a date?  Maybe that had been the idea.  Maybe Curt was regretting have asked for a date instead of another meaningless shag.  To distract himself—and steady his shaking hands—Arthur opened up the menu and started looking at it.  That didn’t prove terribly helpful, because it was written in French.

            “I read one of your other books,” Curt told him.

            Arthur dropped the menu in surprise, causing a slight clatter of flatware when it landed, giving Curt a good laugh.  “Really?” he asked.  He wouldn’t put it past Curt to tease him with a lie…

            “Yeah.  I think you missed the perfect title, though.”

            “Perfect title?”

            Curt nodded, with a slightly lecherous grin.  “You should’ve called it _Route 69_.”

            “It’s not a cheap porn flick!” Arthur exclaimed, a little too loud in his horror.

            Curt shrugged.  “There _were_ several of them.”

            Arthur sighed.  “It seemed the most sensible way for their experimentation to go.”

            “Yeah, I’m not sure about that.  I think a guy who’s always told himself he was straight would rather fuck another guy’s ass than suck on his dick.”

            “But they had _both_ been tellin’ themselves they were straight.”

            “I don’t know, the one of ‘em seemed to embrace it pretty quick.”

            “I suppose he did,” Arthur admitted.  “Keep in mind, in a way that was my first novel.  _Celebrity_ wasn’t…a novel in the same sense.  Different rules.”

            “Yeah.”  Curt laughed.  “And at least you’d been all the places you were writing about in _Celebrity_.  It’s pretty obvious you’ve never been out west.”

            Arthur’s face burned with humiliation.  “When would I ‘ave been able to do that?”

            But Curt smiled at him, and set a hand on his thigh under the table.  “Maybe I can take you sometime.  Then you can re-write it to match what the scenery really looks like.”

            The prospect was too thrilling to allow Arthur to form words, and he sat there in silence, probably with some silly smile plastered all over his senseless face, making him look a complete git.

            “The sex scenes were really hot,” Curt continued, sliding his hand a little further up Arthur’s thigh, getting dangerously close.  “Way better than in _Celebrity_.  Maybe that’s because you stuck to what you knew, and mostly described how it felt to _get_ fucked, instead of being the one doing the fucking.”

            Despite the desire in Curt’s eyes—and the position of his hand!—Arthur had to look away, nervously righting his silverware.  “It’s not as though I prefer it that way,” he objected weakly.

            “Sounded to me like you enjoy it plenty,” Curt chuckled, withdrawing his hand.

            “Enjoyment and preference aren’t the same—”

            “C’mon, don’t be so defensive.  You said yourself you hadn’t had sex since getting to America.  With your pretty face, and being so young, of _course_ everyone expected you to be the bottom, so of course you’ve got no experience with anything else.”

            “It’s not that I’ve _never_ been on top,” Arthur insisted.

            “Yeah?  How many times?”

            Arthur’s face was probably brilliant red.  “Maybe…three or four…”  Even blokes his own age hadn’t wanted to let him take them.

            “And how many guys have fucked you?”

            “I don’t want to think about that.”  He had, after all, been somewhat too easy to pull in the days between the break-up of the Flaming Creatures and his flight from London.

            Curt laughed at him.  “Just relax and take the compliment, okay?”

            Arthur nodded.  “What about the story and the characters?  What did you think of them?”

            “The characters were okay, I guess.  Didn’t feel like anybody special.  The story was predictable.  But sweet.”

            Arthur sighed deeply.  “You just summarised every single review of the book.”  The term ‘sophomore slump’ had also been applied, decidedly inaccurately, considering how much worse all his later books had been received.  Not that most of the others had even been reviewed.

            “There are actually reviews written of that kind of book?”  Curt’s eyes widened in surprise.

            “There _are_ magazines aimed at a gay readership,” Arthur pointed out.  “And the little bookstores that carry them sometimes put out fliers with reviews of the bigger releases.”  Not that any of his books could be called a ‘big’ release.  Except, perhaps, _Infamy_.

            Curt shook his head.  “Wouldn’t have expected that.  So, how do your other books stack up?”

            “Terribly, if you look at the sales.”  Arthur shrugged.  “I think they’re better, really.  I stuck to things I know.  Life in London or New York, men goin’ about their normal lives.  No more rock gods or road trips.”

            “That’s probably why they don’t sell as well.”

            “Probably.”

            “How are the sex scenes?” Curt asked, with a wink.

            Arthur bit back a small smile.  “That’s the one part no one’s ever complained about.”

            “Maybe I should read them,” Curt said thoughtfully.  “The sex scenes in that other one were so hot I kept having to stop reading to jerk off.”

            Doing his best not to picture that, Arthur looked away from Curt’s earnest face.  He’d been talking pretty loudly.  What if someone heard him!  And sure enough, there was someone sitting at the nearest table now.  When had she come in?  Worse still, she was obviously listening to them, and—

            Arthur’s train of thought was broken off by the approach of the waiter.  “Have you decided what you would care to order?” he asked them in a snooty voice that suggested he didn’t think they could afford anything at such an expensive restaurant.  Arthur, of course, actually _couldn’t_ afford anything—except perhaps a glass of water or a complimentary piece of bread—but Curt surely could.  Of the two of them, Curt looked the less appropriate for the place, though; he had let his hair down out of its ponytail, and was wearing a plain black shirt over a pair of slightly worn-out jeans.  At least Arthur was wearing a button-down blouse, even if it was rumpled and a bit worn at the cuffs.

            “I guess it’s the wrong time of year for oysters, huh?” Curt asked, with an impish grin.

            “Indeed.”

            “Well, last time I was here, I had this little steak,” Curt said, picking up his menu and glancing inside, without seeming to notice—or perhaps just not caring—that it was upside down.  “I forget what it was called.  Really good stuff.  Melted in the mouth.”

            “Filet mignon?”  The waiter looked at him with considerable distrust.

            “Sounds right,” Curt agreed.  “I’ll have that.”  He shut the menu, and handed it back to the waiter.  “Should we make it two?” he asked, looking at Arthur.

            “Er…”  Filet mignon _was_ supposed to be excellent, and Arthur had always wanted to try it…but it was also probably the most expensive thing on the menu.  Except perhaps lobster.  If lobster was on the menu.  Still…  “I suppose so,” he agreed, with a weak little smile, returning his menu as well.

            The waiter jotted the order down uneasily.  “And would the messieurs care for a glass of wine with their dinner?”

            “Yeah, sounds good.  Whatever goes best with the meat,” Curt said.  “These places all have wine stewards and shit, right?  He can choose.”

            “Some of our wines are more expensive than others, monsieur…”

            “I don’t care.”

            “Monsieur…”

            “I’ve got five gold records and two fucking Grammies.  I could buy this whole goddamn restaurant, so get your bony ass into the kitchen and outta my sight!”

            The waiter stormed off in a snit, leaving Curt laughing.

            “You couldn’t really buy the restaurant, could you?”

            “Not unless they were having a fire sale,” Curt laughed.  “But I could rent the whole place for a night if I wanted, easy.”  He cleared his throat uncomfortably.  “And, uh, it’s not that I didn’t really know what filet mignon was called.  No matter what some people say about me, I’m not a total barbarian.  I just wanted to mess with that pompous prick.”

            Arthur chuckled.  “That’s good to know.”  It _had_ seemed a little improbable that anyone could be that ignorant.  Particularly someone who had famously spent a whole week in Paris sharing a single hotel room with his lover and his lover’s wife, sampling all the best of everything the city had to offer.  An incident that Mandy seemed not to have jogged along with the rest of her memories…

            As they fell into an awkward silence, Arthur tried to think of a good way to bring their audience to Curt’s attention without making it too obvious to her that he had noticed her.  “I still can’t believe it,” Curt said, before Arthur could think of anything to say.  “You didn’t _really_ kill off your own character, right?  You just said that ‘cause you were still mad at me and wanted to stick the knife in a little, right?”

            “That wouldn’t ‘ave even occurred to me…”  Arthur smiled weakly.  “I just thought it seemed like the right way to end it.  You can read it if you want.  There’s a copy waitin’ for you already.”

            “No fucking way am I reading that!  Bad enough I had to read the version where you made me dump you _after_ you took a bullet for me.”  Curt paused, a frown taking over all his features.  “It wouldn’t have been quite so bad if it hadn’t been a shooting on a stage.”

            Arthur winced.  “I’m sorry.”  He hadn’t thought of the parallel to Brian’s false death at all, somehow.  “There really wasn’t any other way to do it.”

            “I guess not.  Probably why you should have realised you shouldn’t write such a fucking insulting ending in the first place.”

            “I’ll never hear the end of this, will I?”

            “Not likely,” Curt said, with a chuckle.  “But what did you mean about a copy waiting for me?”

            “I got to thinkin’ about what you’d said.  How whoever was protectin’ Tommy Stone—the committee or whoever—might go to desperate lengths to stop his secret gettin’ out.  What if someone _was_ plannin’ to silence me, keep it from bein’ published?  So, just in case, I left a copy of the first draft in a safe deposit box, and left the key with my will, to be given to you if anything happened to me.”

            “Arthur…”

            “I’m sorry; I left your pin in the safe deposit box, too.  So if anyone killed me, they wouldn’t get their hands on it.”

            Curt smiled, and patted his hand.  “It’s okay.  Just don’t talk about getting killed anymore.  You’re gonna ruin our date.”

            “I won’t,” Arthur promised.  For a moment, he was carried away by the blissful thought of actually being on a proper date with Curt Wild.  But then reality sank in as he caught a flash of movement in his peripheral vision.  Bloody woman was taking notes right in plain sight!  “Curt, there’s something I should tell you,” Arthur started, in a low voice.

            “What’s wrong?”

            “Don’t look, but—”

            Arthur was interrupted by the sound of the maître d’s voice, accompanied by heavy footsteps.  “Yes, he’s back there, but I really must protest this behaviour!”

            “Protest all you like, but get out of my way!”  That voice was…no…it had to have been Arthur’s imagination…

            It wasn’t his imagination.  Moments later, Tommy Stone came into view, storming towards them, his face growing more incensed with every step.  “You really are a bloody traitor,” he growled at Curt.

            “You’d think a place this expensive would have some kind of policy against vermin coming in off the street, wouldn’t you?” Curt asked Arthur.  “Though I guess a talking rat is odd enough to get an exception.  In a circus freak kind of way.”

            Arthur wanted to open his mouth and beg Curt not to antagonise the man they both knew very well was being protected by a vicious governmental agency, but he was terrified that Tommy might recognise his voice.  Though that _had_ been nine months ago, so maybe Tommy had forgotten, the way everyone else who heard his question had forgotten all about it.  Then again, how many men in New York had a Manchester accent?  Americans had trouble telling it from any other less typical English accent, but Tommy—Brian—would recognise it easily enough.

            “Are you really so desperate for publicity that you’re willing to date a man who would write something so trashy about you?” Tommy demanded.

            Curt laughed.  “You shouldn’t trust your handlers to read everything for you.  It’s not trashy at all.  Quite beautiful, in fact.  Just like its author,” Curt added, stroking Arthur’s cheek, sending a rush of blood to his face even as he felt cold dread gripping his heart.  Curt seemed to have entirely changed his mind about where he stood on the issue of painting targets on both their heads; now Curt was the one with the paint brush, and it was a fucking huge one!

            “You’re disgusting,” Tommy said, scowling down at them.

            “Jealous?” Curt asked, with a wicked smile.  “You’ve never dated a guy this hot.”  Utter nonsense!  Curt was far more attractive than Arthur could ever hope—or even want—to be.

            “I—I’ve never dated a man at all!”

            “Or is it him you’re jealous of?”  Of course it was.

            “Just because you brought him to the same restaurant where I took y—” Tommy started, then hastily stopped his words, though he continued breathing heavily in his rage.

            “Same table, too,” Curt pointed out.  “Guess they remembered us.”

            Arthur was fighting not to smile.  So that was why Curt had chosen such a strange place for their date!  But being taken on the same first date that Brian had been was hardly a comforting thought.  Yes, he’d rather been trying to imitate Brian when they first met ten years ago, but he hadn’t wanted to become a surrogate for Brian!  He hadn’t even realised how much he wanted Curt for himself until the moment he first laid eyes on him in person, when the entire world had vanished, and only Curt had remained…

            “How sad,” Tommy commented, shaking his head.  “I guess it’s true what they say.  You can take the trash out of the trailer park, but you can’t take the trailer park out of the trash.”

            “You fucking son of a bitch!”  Within seconds, Curt was on his feet, and had punched Tommy in the face, _hard_.

            Tommy staggered backwards, his split lip dripping blood onto his white suit.  “My, did I touch a nerve?” he asked, his mocking voice slipping a little towards Brian’s true voice and native Birmingham accent.

            “You think I care what you say, pencil-dick?”

            “Pencil—?!”

            Curt laughed, a cruel and mirthless sound.  “Bet you didn’t know that, did you, Arthur?” he asked, glancing at Arthur over his shoulder.  “It’s so small you can barely feel it when he fucks you.  That’s why Mandy was so happy he decided to get off with me instead.  Left her free to sleep around with men who actually had equipment.”

            “You stupid bloody wanker…” Tommy growled, his false American accent almost as completely obliterated as his American vocabulary.

            Curt reached back and stroked Arthur’s hair with one hand, without his eyes deviating from Tommy’s enraged face.  “You’d be surprised to see Arthur’s,” he said.  “Almost as big as mine.”  Arthur was too busy hiding his reddening face in his hands to feel slighted at the implication that his willy somehow lacked something that Curt’s had.  How could Curt stand to talk so loudly about this sort of thing in such a public place?!  And why was he insisting on dragging Arthur into it?

            “This is what I hate about Americans,” Tommy announced, his voice completely restored to the smooth, sensual tones of Brian Slade.  “You’re all completely obsessed with size, even though it’s utterly meaningless.”

            “That’s what everyone who’s ashamed of his puny dick says,” Curt laughed.

            “There’s nothing wrong with my—how would you even think you could know how big it is, anyway?!” Tommy demanded, catching himself and returning to the Tommy Stone voice again.  “You’ve never seen it!”

            “What, you think I had my eyes shut the whole time?  I’m not you, Brian.”

            “That’s not my name.”

            “Hey, remember all those things you refused to let me do to you?” Curt asked, grinning.  “Claimed they were too much for your delicate little body?  Arthur’s gonna let me do all of them.  Aren’t you?”

            “Eh?  Ah…of course…anything you want…” Arthur answered, more or less by instinct.  It didn’t matter what Curt wanted him to do for him; he’d do it gladly.

            Tommy’s face contorted into a very different kind of rage.  “Well, that explains it all, doesn’t it?” he said, rubbing his chin.  “So this is a long-standing betrayal, then.”

            “Huh?”  Curt’s turn to be left lost and confused.  How was he to have known Tommy had heard Arthur’s voice before?

            “I can see I’m wasting my time here,” Tommy said, fetching a handkerchief out of his pocket and dabbing at the blood on his chin.  “You’ll be hearing from my lawyers in the morning.  Both of you!”  He stalked off again without waiting for a response.

            “I don’t get that,” Curt said as he sat down again.

            Arthur sighed, and explained what had happened between the end of the concert back in February and their meeting in the bar.  “But, Curt…what did I just promise to do?”

            Curt laughed, and shrugged.  “Beats the shit outta me.  I remember there was stuff I wanted to try that Brian was scared to do.  I don’t remember what any of it was.  I just thought it’d get a rise out of him.”

            Arthur grimaced.  Well, it was probably better than the alternative.  But a glance at the next table reminded him that there were bigger issues at hand.  She hadn’t even bothered to hide her camera again.  “We’ve got another problem,” Arthur said quietly.  “The woman at the table behind you’s been listening to us the ‘ole time, and she took a photo of you strikin’ Tommy.”

            Curt glanced over his shoulder at the woman, then gave Arthur a lecherous smile.  “Then we should make sure to give her a good show, shouldn’t we?”

            “What?”

            Curt didn’t answer with words.  He leaned across the table and pulled Arthur to his lips.  It was a passionate kiss that seemed to suck Arthur’s very soul out of his body, letting it flow into Curt’s through their intertwining tongues, as their lips pressed together over and over, repositioning slightly, as if battling for the best possible position to spend a lifetime doing nothing but kissing.  Arthur was left dazed when Curt finally released him.

            “Thanks!”  The woman was now standing right next to their table, camera in hand, and what looked suspiciously like a tape recorder in her bag.  “This is front page stuff!”  With a cheerful wave, she left in a great hurry.

            Curt chuckled.  “Bet she’s gonna run into some big room somewhere and yell ‘Stop the presses!’”

            “She’s the type who would,” Arthur sighed.  “This will completely ruin me.  Now everyone will know all my secrets…” he moaned.

            “Calm down.  What are the chances someone’s really gonna recognise your face from that kind of photo?”

            “They don’t ‘ave to bloody recognise me!  She’ll print my name right next to the photos, and tell everyone where I work, while she’s at it!”

            “You know her?”

            “Of course I do.  Her paper’s about as close to a rival as the _‘Erald_ has.  When I first started, I was mostly workin’ commuter stories.  Shite about the subways, parkin’ laws, traffic accidents, that sort of thing.  And she was workin’ that beat, too.  We ran into each other often enough.”  And the first time Arthur had gotten an interview she had missed out on, she had tried to seduce him to get hold of his notes.  Naturally, that hadn’t worked out for her.

            “Oh.  Uh…sorry.”

            “You had no way of knowing,” Arthur sighed.  “What I don’t get is how she and Tommy Stone both knew to show up here.”

            “Yeah, that’s partially my fault,” Curt admitted, with a sheepish smile.  “This afternoon, I got this call from Tommy’s lawyers, saying they wanted everyone ‘attacked’ by your novel to sue together, to strengthen the case.  I was pretty pissed at the whole idea, so I told them that not only was I not about to sue you, but that I was going on a date with you tonight.  I knew Brian wouldn’t let _that_ go.  Didn’t entirely expect him to show up in person, though.”  Curt shook his head.  “Don’t know where the bitch with the camera came from.”

            “She might ‘ave just been following you in the hopes of gettin’ any kind of lead.”  That, too, seemed like her speed.  She might also have come to the conclusion that Arthur was the author of the novel, and have been following _him_ around in the hopes of finding that lead.  He hadn't exactly admitted that he was gay when he had spurned her advances, but he had come close enough to it that she undoubtedly had guessed that truth.  Putting the further clues together wouldn't be hard for a journalist of her skills.

            “Well, don’t let it get to you,” Curt said, taking hold of his knee under the table again.  “Let’s just forget the whole fucking thing happened, all right?  We’ll finish our dinner, and go back to my place for some great sex.  Okay?”

            Arthur smiled.  “That last part sounds perfect.”


	12. Chapter Eleven

            Only with great trepidation did Arthur enter the _Herald_ offices that morning.  True to her word, that woman had plastered the story all over the front page.  At least she _had_ credited the _Herald_ with first breaking the story that Tommy Stone was threatening to sue Arthur over the novel alleging that he used to be Brian Slade, but of course she also said in the plainest possible text that Arthur Stuart and Arthur King were the same person.  And she had printed a very full account of the portion of his date with Curt that she had witnessed, including a very large and very intimate photo of them kissing.

            Sure enough, when he got to his desk, he found Murray, Lionel and Mary gathered at the water cooler, loitering as if they merely wanted to talk to each other.  Of course he knew better; they were lying in wait for him, like hyenas watching a wounded baby animal crawl away from the herd to die.

            “So how was your big date last night?” Murray asked, even before Arthur had finished setting his satchel down on his desk.  Both he and Lionel had these big, expectant grins on their faces.  They couldn’t have been telegraphing themselves any more clearly if they had hired Western Union.  Well, Arthur had been through this sort of thing before…

            “Apart from when he punched Tommy Stone in the face, it was lovely, thanks,” Arthur told them.

            Murray and Lionel both looked crestfallen.  They’d really been hoping he’d be fool enough to deny it.  Mary took one look at their faces and started laughing.

            “I can tell you all about how fantastic the sex was, if you’d like,” Arthur added.

            Both men hastily made excuses, and fled, leaving Arthur laughing.

            “Been through this sort of thing before, have you?” Mary asked.

            “Before I left London, yeah.”

            “Is that why you left?  It all got too much to deal with?”

            “No, that wasn’t it,” Arthur sighed, sitting down.  “What happened was complicated.”

            “I’ve got time.”

            “I don’t.”  He still had half an article to write before mid-afternoon.

            “You know, you probably don’t have many allies around here right now…”

            Arthur sighed.  Mary may not have meant it that way, but what she was doing was definitely a form of persecution, too.  But it was probably faster to tell her than to try to make her give up.  So he gave her a truncated version.  Just the barest bones.  “When I got to New York, I thought it would make my life easier if I kept to myself more, kept it a secret.”  And then AIDS appeared on the scene, and he became very glad that he hadn’t been as wild in America as he had in London.  “Not everyone’s as easy to deal with as those two.  I learnt quickly how to tell the difference between someone who just wanted a laugh to make himself feel superior and someone who might try to hurt me.”  He was just lucky that most of the people he had met who wanted to hurt him had been Freddie’s slowest brutes, in both senses of the word ‘slow.’

            “I know exactly what you mean,” Mary said, with a sympathetic smile.

            “How could you—oh, yes, of course you do.”  In fact, as a black woman, Mary must have had it twice as bad.  Though at least society was now in a place where racism and misogyny were viewed as the social diseases that they were.  Unfortunately, homophobia was essentially state policy.

            “So how long have you been dating a ‘70s rock star?” Mary asked, after an extended silence.  “Weren’t you doing a story on his ex-boyfriend last winter?”

            Arthur nodded.  “We weren’t seein’ each other yet then,” he assured her.  It would have been entirely unethical to take the story if they had been.  Though considering their one night stand ten years earlier, maybe it had still been a bit unethical.  Not that it mattered, since the story had been cancelled.

            “Does Tommy Stone really have a pencil-dick?”

            Arthur laughed.  “I didn’t ask.”  He really hadn’t wanted to know, either way.  “I doubt it, though.”  If nothing else, surely Mandy would have said something about it if Brian’s performance in bed was inadequate.  “Is none of this at all surprising to you?” Arthur asked.  “Do you always take it so calmly when a co-worker is forcibly outed like this?”  He knew, of course, that he might be setting himself up for a repeat of the story about Lou’s wife…

            “It’s never happened before.  But I’m not surprised.  Good-looking white guys are _always_ gay.”

            “That’s not been _my_ experience.”  Rather the opposite, for the most part.

            While Mary was laughing at that, Lou came up, and asked to speak to Arthur in his office.  Mary gave him a comforting pat on the arm as Arthur was leaving.  Surely Arthur wasn’t being fired over this!  Lou had already known the truth…

            “How is the article for tomorrow coming?” Lou asked, as Arthur was shutting the door to the office.

            “About halfway done,” Arthur admitted.  “Should be able to finish by noon, maybe a little earlier.  Why?  Are you changin’ the deadline?”

            “In light of the story about you in one of our competitors, I thought it might be in our best interests to have you present your own side of the story.  The full story.  Minus the accusations against Tommy Stone.”

            “That’s leavin’ out a lot of the story.”

            “I meant the political accusations,” Lou clarified.

            “That’s still leavin’ out a lot.”  If it had just been the matter of embarrassing Tommy Stone by telling the world he was Brian Slade, Curt wouldn’t have walked out on Arthur back in early March.

            “Do what you can.  But finish up a very rough version of the other story first.  I’ll have someone else polish it.”

            Arthur sighed, and agreed to get right on it.  Still, there might be _some_ advantage to it.  At least he could use it as a platform to explain just why _Infamy_ had the ending that it did.  Then maybe people would be less likely to take up Mitch’s offer of a free replacement copy with the new ending that Curt was demanding he write.  Of course, with all the attention the novel was receiving, the first printing was already starting to sell out, so Mitch was probably not actually going to honour that offer anyway.  The only reason he hadn’t already ordered the second printing—or so he claimed—was because he was waiting on that new, happier ending.


	13. Chapter Twelve

            Curt looked up and down the sidewalk before entering the little bookshop.  If anyone was following him, they were being careful about it; he didn’t see any of the same people around that he had seen last time he’d looked.  Admittedly, he’d kind of gone out of his way to let the world know he was still sleeping with men, but being seen going into a gay bookstore was probably taking things a little too far.

            Given all the attention in the papers the last two days, Curt half expected to find the bookstore packed, but it was just as devoid of customers as the last two times he’d been in.  “Welcome back,” the man behind the counter said, making Curt grimace.  He should have found a different bookstore.  Even incognito, he stood out too much to go to the same one over and over again.

            Trying to ignore the other man, Curt headed over to the wall where Arthur’s books were stashed with the other “K” authors.  There was a sizeable hole where the copies of _Infamy_ had been before.  “You were lucky you came in when you did,” the man behind the counter said to him.  “We’ve already sold all our copies of _Infamy_ , and the publisher doesn’t think they can get us any more until they’ve printed up another run.”  Well, that ought to make Arthur happy.  Even if it was selling for the wrong reasons.  “Just sold the last copy this morning, in fact.  To a pair of giggling college girls.  Straight ones, at that!  Never had straight girls in here before.”

            Idly wondering how a pair of co-eds would have found a gay bookstore, Curt pulled down one of Arthur’s books off the shelf, wondering if it was the one he’d been talking about last night, after they’d had sex.  There was a tag on the front that read “USED – One Owner – Average – Might have come on it.”  Curt jammed the book back on the shelf in disgust.

            “Sorry about that,” the man behind the counter laughed.  “You wouldn’t believe how fast they sell when the owner’s listed as ‘Sexy,’ though.  My little way of getting the used books back off the shelf.  I can charge more for them if a sexy guy admits he might have splattered the book in jerking off, too.  I keep telling Arthur he ought to jerk off onto his books before selling them back, but he won’t do it.”  Curt was very grateful for that, although the idea of Arthur jerking off at all made him pretty horny…

            The man who ran the shop kept chattering at Curt the whole time he was selecting his books, but Curt was doing his best to ignore him and concentrate on the shelf instead..  It seemed like it wasn’t just _Infamy_ that had left that hole:  when Curt was in here before, there had been four or five copies of all the books—except _Route 69_ —but now there were only one or two each.  If he felt sure that Arthur had actually kept copies of all his own books, he might have just picked up the one he was looking for, but Curt hadn’t noticed any bookshelves in Arthur’s tiny little apartment, so it might be that if Curt didn’t buy them, he’d never get to read them at all.

            That meant he ended up going to the counter with five books, and of course the fucking clerk had to comment on every single one as he rang it up.  “Oh, this is one of my favorites,” he commented as he picked up the one Curt had actually come looking for.  “Powerful stuff.  If the lead had been a woman instead of a man, and he’d put a little less emphasis on the sex scenes, he could have sold this to a major publisher, and won all kinds of awards.  This kind of thing happens to women a lot, you know.  And it feels so _real_.  Every man I know who’s been domineered by his partner like that, he always says how true to life it is.  I just hope he wasn’t writing from experience.”

            Curt nodded uncomfortably.  He hoped that, too, but more important to him was the fervent hope that it would never happen in the future.  He didn’t think of himself as the controlling type, but Arthur had kind of lit into him last night, when they should have been drifting off into a contented sleep.  “Don’t you ever do that again,” he had started out by saying.  Curt had just wanted to make Arthur admit that he preferred being the one taking it.  It was better if he was honest with himself, instead of trying to pretend that he didn’t like it so he’d seem more manly, match up to someone else’s idea of who and what he should be.  But Arthur hadn’t liked the methods he’d used to extract the confession, and insisted it was borderline, the first step towards an unbalanced and abusive relationship.  “I won’t be made a plaything, not even by you,” he had insisted.  Of course, Curt had assured him he hadn’t wanted anything of the sort—and he had meant it!—and Arthur had backpedalled a bit, but he still kept maintaining that Curt had started crossing a line not meant to be crossed.

            But hopefully reading this book would help him figure out what he’d done wrong, and avoid it in the future.  Arthur had, in his slipping backwards into softness, explained that his last book had been about a “hapless bloke” who realized that his partner was emotionally abusing him, but even after he got away from one abusive lover, he kept being drawn to the same type, ending up in one unhealthy relationship after another, until he got to the point where he was afraid to let anyone get close.  And that was apparently only the half-way mark!  Though considering it was about three times the size of the others, maybe that wasn’t so surprising.

            The others Curt was buying didn’t sound as promising, plot-wise, but he was sure they’d be worth it for the sex scenes.  He was going to mark all the best, most creative sex scenes so they could try them out later.  After they acted out the best of Ruddy and Phil’s scenes…

            When the clerk told him his total, Curt got out his wallet, and checked the billfold.  “Fuck!”  Enough for one, but nowhere near enough for five.  With a grimace, he got out his credit card, and handed it over to the man behind the counter.  The instant the plastic left his fingers, he started a mental count-down from five.

            He hadn’t even reached two by the time the other man let out a cry of amazement.  Then he laughed nervously.  “And here I had thought you were avoiding eye contact because you were in the closet…”

            “Just run the card already,” Curt growled, finally meeting the man’s gaze.  He wished he hadn’t.  The guy was fucking ugly.

            “Why are you buying your own copies?” the clerk asked.  “I’m sure Arthur would let you read his.”

            “I’m not so sure he’s got any copies of his own.”

            “Well, he’s never sold any here, and I know publishers always give authors a copy.”  The man shrugged before finally getting to work with the card.  He continued to talk about Arthur for the entire rest of the check-out process, right up until he handed the—thankfully plain!—bag with the books to Curt.  “See if you can’t talk him into finally doing a signing here,” the man said.  “He’s always refused before, because he was scared of his co-workers finding out, but now that they know, what’s the harm?”

            “Considering you don’t have any of his books left, what would be the point?” Curt countered.

            “Well, when the next run of _Infamy_ comes in, for example!”

            Curt shrugged.  “I’ll mention it,” he said, on his way out.  Mostly, he planned on asking just why that clerk was so obsessed with Arthur.  It was obvious he had a crush on him, but Arthur hadn’t done anything to _encourage_ that, had he?

            He continued to stew about it the whole way home, but it was only after he got inside his apartment that he realized maybe this was the kind of thing Arthur had been talking about.  What right did he have to be jealous about things that had happened when they weren’t even seeing each other?  Or about some ugly shithead with a crush?

            Sighing, Curt grabbed a beer and dumped the bag of books on the kitchen table.  After taking out the one he wanted, he went over to sit down on the couch and start reading.  Arthur was going to come over after work, but that probably wouldn’t be for at least an hour.  Plenty of time to get going through the book and look for all the danger signs he needed to avoid.

            Just once, Curt really wanted to make sure that when—if—they broke up, it wouldn’t be because he was an asshole.  He wasn’t really sure any of his past break-ups hadn’t ultimately been because of his general lack of positive personality traits.

            But now he had a convenient handbook of what not to do.  Or at least some of the things not to do.  Well, it was a start, at any rate.

            Curt had only just finished opening his beer when the phone rang.  That figured.  He answered with a snarl.

            “Are you seeing this?” Mandy’s voice asked through the phone line.

            “I thought you were still out of town,” Curt said, annoyed that she was taking up his time for God-knows-what.

            “I am.  It’s the national news,” she replied, hounding him with the network and other pointless details until Curt felt like he didn’t have any choice but to turn on the television and see what was going on, if only to make her shut up so he could get back to Arthur’s book.

            Much to his astonishment, Curt found the screen resolving into a luscious, full-color image of Brian in a green get-up, giving the famous “rock and roll is a prostitute” speech.  That was just about a month before they had first met…

            “What’s…?” was all Curt could say.

            “They showed a clip of Tommy Stone talking first.  At some Reynolds rally.”

            “Whose side are they on?”  To the untrained eye—and ear—there wasn’t much similarity between Tommy and Brian…

            “They said they have exclusive audio to settle some story,” Mandy told him, moments before the screen changed to show side-by-side photos, facial close-ups of Tommy and Brian.

            Brian’s face was dimmed out as the audio started playing, of Tommy calling him a traitor.  As Curt heard his own voice replying—so weird to hear his _speaking_ voice—he couldn’t stop himself from uttering some choice words aimed at the bitch who had been spying on them.

            “What?  What bitch?  What are you talking about?” Mandy asked.

            Curt grimaced, trying not to sigh.  “Some woman at a rinky-dink paper.  They printed up this big article about me and Arthur this morning, ‘cause she was spying on us on our date last night.  She must’ve recorded it all.”  Technically, he probably should have been thanking someone for only starting the recording at Tommy’s arrival.  When that woman came in, they’d been talking about Arthur’s history regarding sexual positions.  That was a humiliation the poor man didn’t need.

            As the recording played, every time Tommy Stone spoke, his portrait was lit up, while Brian’s remained dark.  But then, when Tommy’s voice started slipping back towards Brian’s, they would both be lit up a little, and when he had regressed fully, then Tommy’s went dark altogether.  Of course, the news article had mentioned that Tommy slipped back into his native voice a few times, but actually _hearing_ it was sure to convince more people of the truth of the matter.  Hopefully.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case anyone's wondering, no, Arthur didn't write about being domineered from his own experience. Originally, I wanted to put in a conversation about that, and he was going to explain that shortly before he wrote that, the Flaming Creatures got in touch with him to let him know they were back together (or some of them got back in contact with him individually) and it was actually based on what had happened to one of *them* over the years since the band's break-up. But I never found a naturalistic place to put in that conversation, so...since it wasn't actually important to the narrative, I thought I'd just put it here.


	14. Chapter Thirteen

            Arthur was feeling remarkably confident as he walked up to Curt’s door.  He definitely should have been worried about any number of things, but all he could feel at the moment was the tremendous weight of responsibility that had been lifted from his shoulders at long last.  The world had heard his message, and he didn’t need to be the one who babysat the process as everyone made up their minds as to whether or not to believe him.  He probably would be anyway, but for tonight it could wait.

            All that mattered at this moment was that Arthur had finished his work early enough that he’d been able to retrieve Curt’s pin from the bank, and was now wearing it proudly as he knocked on the door to his flat.  They were going to spend all night making love, and he had arranged to have tomorrow off, so as soon as they woke up, they could make love again, without Arthur having to rush off to get to the office on time.

            It seemed to take Curt quite a long time to answer the door, and even then he didn’t open it right away.  Arthur could hear feet shuffling on the other side of the door, and Curt’s voice saying something, then the door finally opened just far enough for Arthur to slip through.  Perhaps Curt was being plagued by gossipmongers from the tabloids?

            “I was able to get off early today,” Arthur explained as Curt shut the door behind him.  “And it looks like you were startin’ the same thing,” he said despite himself, as he looked over and saw that Curt was sporting an enormous erection.  And no matter how he flattered himself, he couldn’t imagine it had been caused by his arrival.

            “No, it’s not what you think!” Curt insisted.  “I was reading one of your books to pass the time until you got here, but then a sex scene snuck up on me, and before I knew it…”  He smiled, a helpless expression.

            “Is that all?”  It didn’t sound entirely believable—how could a sex scene in a book he’d already read ‘sneak up’ on him?—but it was too flattering to deny.  “I’ll be glad to help.”

            Eagerly, Arthur knelt down in front of Curt, carefully lowering the zip on his jeans to free the prisoner within.  How long had he been dreaming of this?  As he gingerly stroked and licked, Arthur tried futilely to remember the first time he’d had the fantasy, but it had formed the obsession of so many of his long, lonely nights that trying to pinpoint the origin of it was impossible.  It didn’t matter:  it was fantasy no longer.  Here was everything Arthur had wanted, made beautifully real.

            No guitar, no audience, no band, no cameras, no stage, nothing but the two of them, alone in this narrow hall, nothing in the world mattering other than the feeling of Curt’s cock in his mouth.

            Curt let out a moan of pleasure, and his fingers started running through Arthur’s hair.  Arthur momentarily contemplated stopping, and begging Curt to take him here and now, then thought the better of it and redoubled his efforts.  After all the times he had fantasised about this, it should be _perfect_.

            And he was doing his best to make it perfect, applying every trick he had ever learned.  Curt was soon gasping his name, his fingers still tangling in Arthur’s hair, pulling and pushing lightly to guide him.  It was a disappointingly short span of time until Curt let out a final, gurgled cry of ecstasy, and released his climax into Arthur’s mouth.

            Curt leaned back against the wall, his rapid breathing slowing from deep pants down to regular, shallow breaths, as Arthur swallowed, enjoying the salty sensation.  Somehow, it always tasted better coming from a man Arthur truly cared about; small wonder, then, that this seemed the finest thing he’d ever tasted.

            Once Curt’s cock had returned to its limp state, Arthur carefully replaced it in his trousers, and did up the zip.  “Do you always go about with no pants on?” Arthur asked, as he got to his feet again.

            Curt laughed.  “They cramp my style,” he said.  “And haven’t you lived in this country long enough to figure out that ‘pants’ here and ‘pants’ there are two different things?”

            “Do you always criticise right after gettin’ a blowjob?” Arthur asked, lifting Curt’s chin slightly, so they were looking right into each others’ eyes.

            “Then don’t give me such an easy opening,” Curt chuckled.  “It wasn’t a criticism, anyway.  Not exactly…”  Curt pulled Arthur’s face in closer, and kissed him passionately.  “You want me to make it up to you?’ he offered.

            “Not just yet,” Arthur replied, with a smile.

            “You got something better in mind?”

            “Not better.”  Arthur cleared his throat uncomfortably, and pulled the print-out from his satchel.  “It’s not the least romantic, but you need to look over this article.  I don’t want it goin’ out if you object to any of it.  And we can still call in and make changes for a few more hours yet.”

            Curt’s eyebrows went up, and he accepted the article, without looking at it.  “What’s it about?”

            “Basically, it’s my— _our_ —side of what happened in the restaurant the other night.  And a few other important things.  Like why _Infamy_ ends the way it does.”

            “You’re not telling the story because you refuse to write the new ending, are you?” Curt asked, eyeing Arthur suspiciously.

            Arthur laughed, and kissed him deeply.  “I ‘aven’t completely decided yet.  You might be able to persuade me…but we can talk about that _after_ you’ve had a look at the article.  I don’t want it to go to print without knowin’ it won’t upset you.”

            Curt sighed.  “Okay.  But get me a beer, will you?”

            “Sure.”  Arthur headed into the kitchen, as Curt went into the living room, towards the sofa.  A plain brown paper sack sat on the kitchen table.  Hoping it wasn’t groceries that Curt had forgotten to unpack, Arthur was about to look inside the bag when he heard Curt’s voice calling out to him.

            “Get one for yourself, too, while you’re in there.”

            Arthur sighed.  He really didn’t like Curt’s choice of beer—in fact, he didn’t care for American beer at all, though he couldn’t afford any other kind—but it would seem rude if he refused, surely.  But there was the matter of that bag of groceries, first!

            Or not.  A glance inside the bag showed four paperback books, though there wasn’t enough light hitting them for him to see their titles.  He’d have to ask Curt about them later…

            After grabbing two cans of beer from the refrigerator, Arthur went in to join Curt on the sofa, setting his beer down on the end table near Curt’s elbow.  And near a copy of _Love Struggle_ —to date, the absolute worst title Mitch had ever forced on him.  “Is _that_ what you were readin’?” Arthur asked, astonished.

            “Yeah.”

            No wonder the sex scene had ‘snuck up’ on him; there was one on page three.  It had been important to set up both the subtlety of the power dynamic and how easily the poor protagonist had been overlooking what was being done to him.  “Where did you get it?”

            “Bookstore.”

            “Why?  If you wanted to read it, you could ‘ave just asked to read my copy.”

            Curt let out a helpless little smile, even as he opened his beer.  “Where do you keep books in that tiny little apartment?” he asked, after taking a swallow from the can.

            “In the lockers.”

            Curt shrugged.  “I didn’t have any way of knowing that.”

            Arthur sighed, sitting down beside him on the sofa, setting his own beer down on the coffee table.  “Don’t tell me all those books on the table are…?”

            “It looked like they’d all be gone by the end of the day.  I didn’t want to miss out.”

            “Almost feels dishonest,” Arthur said, trying not to frown.  “Like I’m tryin’ to boost my own sales if I don’t make you return them…”

            “Sounded like your books are flying off the shelves now.”

            “That won’t last.”

            Curt set the print-out aside, and gently stroked Arthur’s mussed-up hair.  “C’mon, don’t be like that.  Of course it will.  Your writing’s really hot.  You just needed this spark to get people to give it a try.  Now that they’ve had a taste, they’ll want more.”

            “I hope you’re right.”  That was certainly Mitch’s take on the subject when Arthur spoke to him earlier this afternoon.  He’d gone ahead and ordered up second printings on all the other novels, and a third printing for _Celebrity_ , a run twice the size of the others.

            “Can we talk about the new ending for _Infamy_ now?”

            “The article first,” Arthur insisted.

            “I’m done with it,” Curt assured him.  “It’s fine.”  He paused a moment.  “Wait, no, you know what’s _not_ fine?”

            And there it came.  The inevitable complaint.  Arthur could think of several things in the article that Curt might object to, but it probably had to do with their ‘break-up’ after only a Friday night, a Saturday, and a mid-afternoon shag the following weekend.  “What?”

            “Why the _fuck_ is that guy at the bookstore so obsessed with you?!”

            “What?”

            “He wouldn’t fucking shut up about you!  Not for one goddamn minute!  I wanted to punch his teeth in!”

            “I’m sure he just thought it was the polite, attentive thing to do, to compliment your boyfriend,” Arthur said.  His voice trembled slightly on the word ‘boyfriend.’  Would Curt think it was too soon to talk so confidently about them as having an actual relationship?

            “He said most of it _before_ he found out who I was!” Curt insisted.  “You didn’t do anything to encourage his crush on you, did you?”

            “A crush on…?  You must be mental.  He doesn’t fancy me.”

            “He does.”

            Arthur’s brow furrowed.  He couldn’t imagine it.  “I don’t…I really don’t think so…”

            “There’s no question about it.”  Curt’s voice was cold.

            Arthur sighed deeply.  “Well, even if he does, I’ve never done anything to make him think I’m interested.”

            “Okay,” Curt said, with a small sigh of relief.  “I…as long as you’re not doing anything to encourage him, that’s all that matters.”  He didn’t entirely sound like he meant that, not to Arthur’s ears.  “So can we talk about the new ending now?”

            Arthur laughed.  “You’re obsessed.”

            “C’mon, lemme have this, please.  My real romantic fuck-ups are bad enough without adding such an awful fictional one.”

            Arthur kissed him sweetly.  “Suppose I don’t ‘ave any choice, do I?”  Obviously not:  Mitch had laid down the law on the subject quite clearly.  But it was better if Curt didn’t know that.  “So how did you want the new ending to go?”  Hopefully he wasn’t going to suggest what Mitch had:  to have Alexander be the one who takes the bullet and dies.

            “Well…can’t it just skip the whole press conference thing and go right to them living happily ever after?” Curt asked.

            “The press conference is needed to bring down Thompson and his commission,” Arthur pointed out.  Since part of the point of the book was to level just as much direct accusation at Reynolds and the Committee for Cultural Renewal, it was important to do nothing to reduce the level of the accusation.  Including their willingness to commit murder.

            “Okay, fine, but just take out the shooting.”

            Arthur nodded, biting his lip.  “The easiest way would be if Johnny’s so horrified after the attempt on Ruddy’s life that he comes clean to the press while Phil is still recoverin’ from his injuries.  Basically, the ending it’s already got, minus Ruddy switchin’ lovers.”

            “I don’t want an ending where you get shot, even if it _is_ only an injury.”

            Arthur sighed.  Why would it matter if his fictional alter ego took a non-lethal bullet?  It wasn’t as though that caused any injury to _Arthur_.  But there was something marvellous about the pleading look Curt was giving him, and Arthur just couldn’t refuse him.  “I suppose if Johnny’s there incognito, to find out for himself what’s bein’ said about him, then when he sees the men with the guns, he does something to interfere, prevents them from firin’.  Then he could go on stage and confess that all Phil and Ruddy’s accusations against him are true.  That he’s willin’ to go on record about what Thompson’s made him do.”

            Curt let out a bitter laugh.  “If only reality would be that pretty!”

            “You got a better idea?”  If he was going to shoot down _another_ alternate ending, then he’d better be ready to provide one himself!

            “No.  And after the conference, Ruddy and Phil go off for a celebratory fuck, right?”

            “Of course,” Arthur chuckled.  “That’s how these things always end.”

            Curt grinned, then pulled Arthur close for a deep, passionate kiss.


	15. Chapter Fourteen

            The pounding on the door was echoing through the whole fucking apartment.  Curt lifted his head and looked back over his shoulder at the clock on the bedside table.  Three in the morning.  Who made that much noise at three in the morning?

            Determined to give someone a piece of his mind they wouldn’t soon forget, Curt sat up and slung his feet over the edge of the bed.  But it was pretty cold in the apartment, making it hard to force himself to move much further than that.

            “Curt?  What’s goin’ on?”  Arthur’s voice was still heavy with sleep.

            “Some drunk at the wrong door,” Curt assured him, as he finally forced himself out of bed.  “I’m gonna get rid of them.  You go on back to sleep.”  It was surprising they were still out there pounding on the door, in fact.  Normally they gave up and tried another door by now.  Might be some incredible asshole from a tabloid, looking for a ‘sensational’ story.  In which case it would make everything worse if Curt was still naked when he went to the door.  Just in case, he put on his bathrobe before making his way through the darkened apartment to the door.

            The pounding only stopped as he started undoing the bolt.  Curt was already yelling at the person on the other side as he started opening the door. “Just what the _fuck_ is wrong with you!?”

            The cops in the hallway stared at him in open surprise.

            “What the…?”  Curt wasn’t even sure how to react to what he was seeing.  Why would three cops be pounding his door down in the middle of the night?  He’d gotten off drugs years ago, and he’d never really done anything wrong other than drugs.  “You got the wrong door or something?”

            Uncertainly, two of the cops looked at each other, as the third shook his head.  “We’re here to arrest you, Mr. Wild.  You have the right to remain si—”

            “Arrest me?!  What the fuck for?!”

            “Are you resisting arrest?” one of the other cops asked, sounding downright fucking _eager_ as he drew his gun.

            Curt put his hands up.  He was _not_ getting shot at his own fucking front door.  And especially not in a fucking _bathrobe_.  “I’m not resisting anything.  I just want to know what the charges are.  Aren’t you supposed to say that before you even start reading me my rights?”

            “Charges of assault and battery against one Mr. Thomas Stone,” the first cop said.

            “So why am I being arrested _now_?  That was two days ago!”

            “We’re just obeying orders,” the third cop said weakly.  Given how many people had used ‘obeying orders’ as an excuse to commit unconscionable crimes, the answer did not fill Curt with confidence.

            He sighed deeply.  “Okay, look, I’ll cooperate, but can I at least get dressed first?  You don’t want to take me down to the station in my bathrobe.  I’m not wearing anything under it.”  And he didn’t want the ‘indecent exposure’ charge that’d be added the first time the robe fell open.

            The cop with his gun out looked like he was ready to open fire, and the third one put his hand on the grip of his own gun.  “Sergeant?” he asked uncertainly.

            “It’s a reasonable request,” the first cop said.  “But no funny business.”

            “The only dangerous things in the entire apartment are in the kitchen, and I don’t intend to go in there,” Curt assured him.

            “All right, but move slowly,” the sergeant told him.

            “Why do you keep your guns in the kitchen?” the trigger-happy cop asked as they followed Curt into the apartment.

            “I don’t have any fucking guns,” Curt snapped without thinking.  Last time he’d been arrested, they’d charged him an extra thousand in fines for swearing at them so much.  “Only dangerous things in here are a few kitchen knives.  And Arthur.  The pen is mightier than the sword and all that shit.  But he’s _not_ in the kitchen.”

            As they made their way slowly through the apartment, the sergeant resumed reciting the Miranda rights at him.  Curt knew them pretty much by heart—probably everyone who watched television did—but he had to admire the sergeant’s tenacity in making sure he obeyed the letter of the law.  Though it’d be better if he didn’t, since then the case would be thrown out on a technicality.

            By the time the four of them reached the bedroom, Arthur was already half dressed.  “What’s goin’ on, Curt?” he asked, his eyes bulging at the sight of the drawn gun.

            “Guess Tommy’s got a funny idea of ‘first thing in the morning,’” Curt said, trying to laugh.  Rather than risk trigger-happy deciding that Curt’s closet looked like a hiding place for deadly weapons, Curt slowly picked up his dirty clothes off the floor and started putting them back on.  He’d look like a mess at the hearing, but who really cared?

            “Do you want me to come with you?”

            “They’re not gonna allow passengers,” Curt laughed.  “Do you drive?”

            “No.”

            “Guess you’ll have to follow by cab.  Grab my keys, okay?  So you can get back in if you need to.”  Curt did actually have two spare keys to his apartment—one stashed with Mandy, and the other with the old lady next door—but he didn’t want these cops knowing that.  Just in case one or more of them was on the take.

            “Do you need me to call your solicitor?” Arthur asked.

            Trigger-happy whirled on Arthur.  “No plotting crimes!”

            “Lawyer!  It means lawyer!” Curt shouted, moving in front of the idiot’s gun barrel.  “He’s English!  They talk different over there!”  He looked over his shoulder at Arthur.  “Jesus, Arthur, pick your words more carefully!  You could’ve at least said barrister!”

            Arthur sighed.  “It’s not like to go high enough to involve a barrister.  Look, I’m tired, all right?!”

            “We’re all tired; it’s three in the fu—freaking morning,” Curt grumbled.  He glanced over at the sergeant.  “Can I grab my lawyer’s phone number on the way out?” he asked.  “For my one phone call?  ‘Cause I don’t know his home number, and he’s not in the phone book.”  And no way was he going to accept a call from a stranger at three in the morning.

            “Not standard procedure, but I suppose I can allow it, since you’re being so cooperative,” the sergeant replied.

            Once Curt was finished getting dressed, he borrowed a piece of paper and a pen from the sergeant—no way trigger-happy could mistake _that_ for going for a weapon—and copied the number out of the Rolodex, then allowed himself to be cuffed and led out of the building.  Thankfully, there was no one out on the street waiting to snap any photos.  He probably looked like shit; unshaved, hair going nuts, wrinkled old clothes, the works.

            Booking was a standard enough procedure; the few things he had in his pockets were traded in to the desk sergeant for a dime for his phone call.  Made it feel like he was selling his stuff, but…surprisingly, before he was allowed to make his call, Curt found himself being confronted by some plain clothes cop who seemed to be pretty important, judging by the way the others kept their distance from him.

            “Are you planning on cooperating, Mr. Wild?” he asked.

            “I’m not planning on trying to escape, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

            “I meant, are you ready to sign a confession?”

            “A confession?” Curt repeated.  “Who signs a confession for assault?  That’s for big charges like murder!  I’m not signing _anything_.  And I’m not talking about what happened until I’ve called my lawyer.  I’ll be happy to talk about unrelated topics, but not about anything that happened in that restaurant.”

            The man in plain clothes scowled, and gestured Curt towards the pay phone without another word.  Something was fishy there.  Maybe he wasn’t really a cop…

            The phone call was not pretty.  Like anyone else, Curt’s lawyer didn’t care for being woken at four in the morning—though Curt wasn’t sure where the intervening hour had gone—and he was probably going to charge triple rates for that phone call.  But he knew what he was doing, and between them, they had worked out the perfect plan for handling this bullshit.  So now all Curt had to do was go to the holding cell and wait for his hearing.

            The idea of sending the cops after him at three in the morning had probably been to make sure he’d get an unnoticed hearing in the middle of the night, too late to make the front pages, so no one would hear about it until Tommy’s people—and/or the Committee for Cultural Renewal—had reworked the story for television.  But Curt’s lawyer was able to pull the right strings to put the hearing on hold until the next morning, _after_ the morning news had already ended.

            He didn’t actually see his lawyer until about half an hour before the hearing was scheduled.  Curt was led into a small waiting room of the sort normally used for visiting attorneys.  His lawyer was waiting for him, with a garment bag and an electric razor.  “I convinced the court that it was in everyone’s best interest if my client was allowed to look presentable,” he said with a smile.

            “Thanks, Hal,” Curt said, accepting the razor.  Looking like shit would be fine if he wanted to claim an abuse of the system was involved, but that wasn’t what they were going for, so looking good would be best.

            After a moment’s hesitation, he decided to go ahead and pull his hair back; this wasn’t a professional appearance, after all, and the court might look on him a little more favorably without all of it hanging loose.  Only then did Curt finally put on the clean clothes Hal had brought him.  Nice dress shirt in blue, pair of black slacks.  Arthur probably picked them out.  They were the most respectable clothes in Curt’s closet, but considering he’d bought them for a funeral, wearing them didn’t feel like a very good omen…

            Once it was time for the hearing, Curt entered the courtroom and felt like he’d stepped into a fucking war zone.  Lights flashing everywhere, people shouting…it was hard to hear the bailiff over the cacophony, and the judge had to bash her gavel into the desk repeatedly to make everyone shut up, and even then they were slow to simmer down.

            While he was waiting for things to begin, Curt looked around.  He was sitting at a table facing the judge’s desk, with Hal sitting beside him.  On the other side of the court was another table, at which two men were sitting, but neither of them were Tommy.  Wasn’t he supposed to be here?  Well, it was probably easier if he wasn’t.

            No matter how much he scanned the crowd, Curt couldn’t see Arthur in the audience, but he was surely there somewhere.

            “Never seen such an unruly crowd in my life,” the judge muttered, shaking her head.  “We will now hear the case of the State of New York v. Curt Wild,” she announced.  “Counselor?”

            One of the two men at the other table stood up.  “Your honor, this is a very simple case, and there is no reason for it to go to trial.  The defendant struck the victim, Mr. Thomas Stone, in the face in the middle of a crowded restaurant.  There were witnesses, and the action was caught on camera.”  He sat down again, and the other man stood up.

            “Your honor, my client, Mr. Stone, feels that he is under further threat of violence from the defendant, and wishes that fact be taken into the court’s consideration.”

            Hal practically had to stab Curt with a pencil to keep him from yelling an objection to that bullshit.

            “Counsel for the defense?  How does your client plead?” the judge asked, turning to look at Hal.

            Hal rose to his feet.  “Your honor, my distinguished colleague from the District Attorney’s office was certainly correct in one thing:  this is a very simple case that should have no need to go to trial.  I realize that this is a divergence from standard court procedure, but I should like to point out that the action in question—the violent application of fist to face—can result in two subtly different charges, those of ‘assault’ and ‘aggravated assault.’  My client is prepared to plead guilty to ‘aggravated assault,’ but not ‘assault.’  He requests the opportunity to explain his reasons in his own words, if your honor will permit him to do so.”

            The judge raised an eyebrow.  “Interesting.  It’s a complete departure from protocol, but I’m willing to allow it, if the District Attorney’s office has no objections.”

            “The District Attorney’s office has no objection to allowing the man to speak for himself.”

            “I don’t think my client would approve of this,” Tommy’s lawyer said.

            “I didn’t ask you what your client wants, and I don’t frankly care,” the judge said.  “In criminal proceedings, the victims do not get legal representation.  If he wants control of the case, tell him to pursue a civil suit.”

            The bailiff led Curt over to the witness stand—thank God no one had put hand-cuffs back on him, or this would all have been so much more humiliating!—where he was quickly sworn in.

            “Well?” the judge asked.  “Explain yourself.”

            Curt nodded.  “Well, to start out with, I had Hal—my lawyer—bring some photos of Brian Slade and Tommy Stone, so you know what their faces—”

            “I know what they look like, Mr. Wild,” the judge interrupted.  “They’ve been all over the news lately.”

            “Okay, so I was in that restaurant on a date when Tommy came in.  Hey, Arthur, stand up a minute so the judge can get a look at you!”  Nothing happened.  No _way_ he wasn’t really there!  He wouldn’t have abandoned Curt, would he?  Not after he’d said earlier that he’d have the day off so they could spend all day having sex!  “C’mon, don’t be shy _now_!”

            Slowly—and with a beet red face—Arthur stood up.  Cameras whirled around to flash photos of him.

            “Is there a point to this?” the judge asked.  Arthur took advantage of her diverted attention to sit down again.  Well, fine.  She’d seen him; that was what mattered.

            “Just so you’ve got an idea of what my type is,” Curt explained.

            “Slender and effeminate?” the judge surmised.  A strangled cry of a decidedly embarrassed type came from Arthur’s direction.

            “I’d use ‘beautiful’ rather than ‘effeminate,’ myself,” Curt chuckled, “but you’ve got the general idea.  And you get that Tommy doesn’t fit that category the way he did ten years ago when he was still Brian.”

            Countless flash bulbs again, and a cry of “Objection!” from Tommy’s lawyer, which the judge didn’t even acknowledge.

            “So there I am, on a date with a much better looking guy than him, in one of the places we used to go when we were going out, and because we weren’t the only ones there, he’s still trying to pretend that he’s not really Brian Slade,” Curt went on.  “In other words, he was so pissed off that he could barely see straight.  And let me tell you something about Brian.  He hates to be miserable alone.  Whatever he’s feeling, he wants someone to join him in it.  He was pissed off, so he wanted _me_ to be pissed off, too.  And he was really going all out to get me as mad as he could.  And yeah, I shouldn’t have let it get to me enough to hit him.  I’ll admit that.  But he went _way_ over the line.”  He shook his head.  “Look, you’ve gotta have my whole criminal record right there in front of you, right?  I’ve only been arrested, what, seven or eight times?”

            “That’s hardly an ‘only,’ Mr. Wild,” the judge said sternly, even as she glanced down at the papers in front of her.  “And the number is nine, not counting this one.”

            Curt had been positive it was fewer than that.  Well, it didn’t matter.  “Thing is, look at ‘em.  Eight counts of possession, and one indecent exposure.  Not a single act of violence.  I’ve got no history of violence—maybe a little property damage no one ever reported—but not violence against other people.”  Hal let out a muffled objection to the admission of property damage, but there was no point in denying it.  Rock legend liked to claim he had trashed dozens of recording studios all over Europe.  Really, it was only two, one in London and one in Berlin, and the one in Berlin hadn’t been violence, that had been him nearly taking the whole room with him when he overdosed.  “I’m not on drugs anymore, and I keep to myself most of the time.  If Tommy hadn’t come up looking for a fight, he wouldn’t have gotten one.”

            “Like most people in the room, I watched the news last night and heard the recording of the argument between yourself and Mr. Stone,” the judge commented.  “It didn’t sound like he said very much to provoke you at all.”

            Curt took several deep breaths to steady himself.  He had _really_ hoped it wasn’t going to come to this.  “That’s because you don’t know me like Brian does.”  Might as well start at the beginning.  “Not long after I went back to London with him in ’72, he heard a fan asking me if I was really raised by wolves.   Not only did I say I was, I told him all this crazy shit I’d made up to fill in the story.  I don’t know who started the story, but it was so much better than reality that I’d always played along with it.  But Brian wanted to know the truth.  Because he’s Brian Slade, and he thinks that makes him deserve more than everyone else.”  Curt shook his head.  “I didn’t wanna tell him, so he tried getting me half drunk.  When that didn’t work, he started using sex to force the truth out of me.  Ended up getting me so hard I couldn’t stand it, _begging_ for release, but he wouldn’t let me fuck him until I told him the truth about how I’d really grown up.

            “I’m sure there are a lot of perfectly normal people living in trailer parks.  But _my_ family was never normal.  They went beyond fucked up.  Other kids got lullabies to fall asleep to.  I got to listen to my drunk old man come home and argue with my mother until he either beat her, raped her or both.  And she took it all out on me the next day.  Hated me from day one.  I got out of that hellhole as soon as I could, but it wasn’t soon enough.  It _couldn’t_ be soon enough.  No matter how badly fucked up I may seem to be to ‘normal’ people, I’m a perfect, well-adjusted saint compared to my family.  Brian knows all of that—and he knows how much it hurts me even to think about that place.  In all the fights we ever got in—all the screaming and recrimination—he never _once_ said a word about the trailer park.  Everything else I’d ever done was fair game, but even at the end, when he was screaming out me out an open window as it was all over…even then, it was the one thing he never mentioned.”

            “Is that all?” the judge asked, after a lengthy pause.

            “You need more?!”  Curt really didn’t have anything more to offer.  He hadn’t thought he’d need more than that.

            She chuckled lightly.  “Is that the extent of your statement?”

            “Yeah.”

            “Then please resume your seat.”

            Curt went back over to sit down next to Hal again.  The lawyer patted his arm and told him he’d done well.

            “Now, for the record, let me just make certain I understand your position,” the judge said, looking at Hal.  “If the charge stands at ‘assault,’ then your client pleads ‘not guilty,’ and if it’s changed to ‘aggravated assault,’ then he pleads ‘guilty.’  Is that correct?”

            “That is correct, yes, your honor.”

            The judge nodded thoughtfully, and looked over at the other table.  “How does the District Attorney’s office feel about the notion of changing the charge?”

            “I believe the District Attorney would be much more pleased with a ‘guilty’ plea to charges of ‘aggravated assault’ than with the trial generated by a ‘not guilty’ plea to ‘assault,’ regardless of the verdict generated in the trial,” the man replied.

            “My client will not be satisfied with that at all,” Tommy’s lawyer insisted.

            “Counselor, if you object to these proceedings based on your absent client’s likes or dislikes one more time, I will find you in contempt of court, and have you removed from the courtroom.  Is that clear?”

            “Yes, your honor,” the lawyer said, with a heavy gulp.  Well, wasn’t Tommy going to be pissed off?

            The judge sighed heavily, and shut her eyes for a moment.  The courtroom hummed with the sound of television cameras, flashbulbs and muttering people throughout that moment.  The judge’s brows knitted together in irritation as she opened her eyes again.  “The purpose of the justice system,” she started, “is to protect the common good.  Punishments are to be administered to the guilty to acquaint them with the severity of their crimes, and ensure that they are not repeated.  We sometimes forget that fact in our desire to adhere to the letter of the law.  A single blow administered in a bitter quarrel between two ex-lovers is hardly a severe crime, nor one likely to be repeated on innocents.  Anyone with an ex-husband must be acquainted with _that_ fact,” she added, with a grim smile.  She must have had a pretty nasty divorce, though Curt had a feeling that she was the probably the one who did the punching whenever it came down to it.  “In light of those facts, and that I dislike having my courtroom turned into a three ring circus, it is the decision of this court to accept the defendant’s plea of ‘guilty’ to the charges of ‘aggravated assault.’  A fine of ten thousand dollars—”

            A murmur ran through the court.  Yeah, it was damned fucking high for a single punch, but Curt wasn’t stupid.  He knew the court always charged stars higher fines, ‘cause they could pay ‘em.  No point in arguing about it.

            “Ten thousand dollars will be paid by the defendant to the state of New York,” the judge continued loudly, “and he will serve one hundred hours of community service as directed by the city and state of New York.”

            Hal leaned over to whisper in Curt’s ear as the judge began the process of closing the case.  “Do you want me to argue for a reduction of the community service hours?”

            “Nah, I can take it.  Besides, I’m not gonna look very penitent if I don’t want to do community service, am I?”

            “True,” Hal agreed.

            “Your honor, I really must protest!” Tommy’s lawyer insisted, getting to his feet.  “The crime warrants jail time, not community service, and if it _must_ be such an inappropriate penalty, it should be at least twice that—”

            The judge rapped her gavel to interrupt him.  “Fifty hours,” she said firmly.  “To _your_ client, as well as to Mr. Wild.”  She raised her gavel again.  “Any further complaints?”

            The lawyer squeaked, and shook his head.

            The judge nodded, and looked back at Curt.  “Oh yes, I almost forgot.  You’re also fined two hundred dollars contempt of court for swearing so much in your statement.”

            Curt laughed.  “I was actually trying to keep it to a minimum…”

            “Try harder next time.”

            “I hope there isn’t gonna be a next time.  But if there is, I’ll try.”

            The judge smiled at him.  “Good.  Maybe you can be cleaned up into a respectable citizen someday.”

            “If that’d mean turning into Tommy Stone, I’d rather not.”

            The judge laughed.

            “Are you _flirting_ with the judge?” Hal hissed at him.

            “Don’t be a dumbass.  She’s almost old enough to be my mother.”  Though as older women went, she was actually pretty good-looking.  Black women seemed to age so much better than white ones, Curt had noticed.

            With the trial officially over, Curt and Hal were ushered out the back door, and around to a clerk’s office, where Curt was expected to cough up the money or go straight to jail until it was produced.  But Hal was the kind of lawyer who came prepared for that sort of thing, and he’d brought his firm’s checkbook.  So now Curt owed _Hal_ ten thousand dollars instead of owing it to the State of New York.  Ten thousand plus two hundred for swearing.  And plus Hal’s exorbitant legal fees.

            All in all, that had turned into the most expensive date Curt had ever been on.

            And the clerk wasn’t entirely sure if the judge had reduced Curt’s community service sentence to fifty hours, or increased it to a hundred and fifty, so he had to wait around while someone found the judge and confirmed it with her.  While they were waiting, a tall, slender body made his way down the hall towards them at a hurried pace.

            As soon as he got close, Curt pulled Arthur into a deep embrace.  Everyone else he had ever dated—except Brian—would have run out on him after seeing him walked out of his apartment in handcuffs.  Arthur not only had stayed, but he had been running around doing things to help arrange everything they needed to pull this off.

            Arthur pulled out of the kiss relatively quickly, though.  “Why were you flirtin’ with the judge?” he asked, his voice so plaintive it was almost a whine.

            “What the fuck are you two smoking?  I wasn’t flirting with her!”

            For some reason, they both remained convinced that Curt had been flirting with the judge—even though she was easily twenty years older than him—and continued arguing about it until the clerk returned and confirmed that the judge had transferred half of Curt’s community service hours to Tommy Stone.  It was doubtful that he’d do it—Brian hated doing what he was told—but it was nice to know that Curt wasn’t going to have to do as much.  Not that he wanted to do _any_ , but hopefully they weren’t going to ask him to do anything too obnoxious.

            Hal went to pull his car around to the front of the courthouse, and told them to meet him in five minutes.  As if it was gonna be that easy.

            “Now what?” Arthur asked, looking at his watch.

            “You mean after we get out of here?”

            Arthur nodded.

            “Back to my place, of course,” Curt said, giving him a light kiss.  “We’ve still got time for a lot of sex before your day off is over.”  It wasn’t even lunch time yet.

            Arthur smiled broadly, but it faded quickly.  “Could we go back to my flat for a little while first?  No one from the _‘Erald_ was there; I’d like to give them at least a detailed précis so they can do a proper story on the hearing.”

            Curt sighed deeply.  “Yeah, probably a good idea.”  Especially given the clerk’s report when he returned:  “she transferred half of your community service hours to Thomas Stone, AKA Brian Slade.”  Official legal proof was always handy.

            Arthur spent most of the rest of the five minutes repeatedly explaining that it wouldn’t take him more than ten minutes to write up the summary.  Then it was time to brave the storm.

            As they approached the doors out of the courthouse, Curt put his arm around Arthur’s waist.  Make sure the waiting hordes get the right picture when the doors open.

            The flashbulbs were blinding, and the shouted questions deafening.  Ugh.  American reporters could be such assholes.  The British ones had been so much more polite.  In person, anyway.  Well, at least they’d tended to wait their turn.  Better than nothing.  And better than _this_.

            Curt glanced over at Arthur, and saw that he had that “deer in the headlights” look on his face.  Well, how else _could_ he react?  This was his first time dealing with this kind of shit.  The only reason Curt had never felt overwhelmed by it was that he was so fucking high when he used to deal with the worst of it that someone could have set his face on fire without him noticing.

            “You gonna be okay?” Curt asked.  It was pointless—there was nothing to be done about it even if he _wasn’t_ okay with it—but it seemed like the right thing to say.

            “I’ll be fine,” Arthur assured him.  “Just never been on this end of it before,” he added, with a smile that was almost roguish.  That wasn’t a side of him Curt had seen before.  What more secrets was he hiding?

            Hal’s car was already idling at the curb.  All they had to do was wade past the sea of cameras and questions to get to it…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The hearing sequence is probably the most unrealistic portrait of the justice system outside of a "Phoenix Wright" game, for which I apologize profusely. And if anyone of a legal profession should happen to read this, please laugh it off in the knowledge that I do understand that it's messed up. Actually, come to think of it, the whole thing's pretty screwed up from start to finish. *shame*


	16. Chapter Fifteen

            By the time they got to Arthur’s flat, it was nearly noon.  Curt’s solicitor accompanied them inside the flat to make sure that there was no one waiting to harass them, then he left again, to get them all some lunch while Arthur wrote up his summary of the hearing.  The whole time the solicitor had been there, Arthur’s computer had been booting up, and Curt had started to rummage through Arthur’s things while they all discussed the luncheon options.  It should not have surprised Arthur that Curt and his solicitor both preferred greasy New York pizza to any more palatable option, but somehow it had, slightly.  Maybe he had always assumed someone of such a dignified profession as the law would have had more refined tastes.

            Arthur had barely started writing up the précis when he felt Curt’s hand on his shoulder.  “Hey, can we talk a minute?”

            “It can’t wait?”  The longer he waited to get this written, the more chance he might forget important details…

            “I’d rather it didn’t.”

            Arthur hesitated a moment, then took off his glasses and turned to look at Curt.  “What is it?  You look so gloomy.”

            Curt sighed, and averted his gaze, withdrawing his hand.  “Um…look, when I was saying all that stuff to the judge, I…”  He shut his eyes, swallowing heavily.  “It just made me realise that all that shit he did to me to make me tell him about my childhood, it wasn’t any different than what I did to you the other night.  I wasn’t trying to do that to you—I thought I was trying to help you, that somehow that made it better, but…”

            In the silence after Curt’s voice trailed off, Arthur stood up, and gently slipped his arms around him.  Curt didn’t open his eyes, but he pulled Arthur tight.

            “I’m really sorry,” Curt finally said, his voice gravelly, like it didn’t want to come out.  “I don’t want to be like him—like any of the people who’ve treated me like shit.  I—”

            “It’s all right,” Arthur assured him, with a light kiss.  “I forgive you.”

            Curt smiled, and finally opened his eyes to look at Arthur.  A few tears slipped from his eyelashes as he did so.  “I’m no good at this whole relationship thing.  I’ll probably fuck up again.”

            “As long as you learn from it each time, that’s all right.  I’ll always be ready to forgive you,” Arthur said, leaning in for a deeper kiss.  Technically, he realised that he was exhibiting all the signs of becoming a habitual victim, and of embracing that fate.  But Curt wasn’t the domineering type.  Everything would work out in the end.

            They spent a little while longer kissing, before Curt let go of him with a small laugh, and said he should probably get back to work, or they’d still be at it when lunch arrived.  It wasn’t as pleasant, but Arthur couldn’t argue with it.  Work was the whole reason they had come back to his horrible little flat in the first place.

            Arthur’s progress through the summary was soon hampered by Curt’s resumption of examining the contents of the lockers beside the desk.  He had certainly recovered from his emotional strain quickly!

            “Hey, you’ve got other books in here!” Curt exclaimed.

            “Of course I do,” Arthur groaned.  “What sort of author only has copies of his own bloody books?”  And why was Curt so surprised about that, considering he had expected Arthur not even to keep his own books?

            “Are of them any good?” Curt asked.

            “I wouldn’t keep them if they weren’t good,” Arthur sighed.  He couldn’t even afford to keep all the ones that _were_ good, between the lack of space and the lack of money.

            “How do the sex scenes stack up against yours?”

            “Most of them don’t even ‘ave sex scenes.  I _do_ read normal fiction, too, you know.”

            Without acknowledging what Arthur had said, Curt started reading out the titles of the books as he pulled them out of the locker to have a look at them.  It actually would have been less distracting if he had been standing behind Arthur, reading over his shoulder and breathing heavily into his ear.

            Eventually, Curt stopped reading out titles, and let out a laugh.  “You’ve got Reynolds’ Bible in here,” he chortled.

            “Who wouldn’t want to know in advance what we were in for?” Arthur replied, with a chuckle.  Ironically, back in 1979, he had thought maybe Orwell got it wrong, and the villain should have been ‘Big Sister.’  Then the 1980 American election took place, and Arthur found out that Orwell had been eerily accurate, aside from the continent on which it was taking place…

            After laughing, Curt resumed searching through the locker.  “Hey, this one’s really fucking worn out!  You must have read it about a thousand times.  Lots of dog-eared pages, too…”

            Arthur did a quick mental calculation of what was in that locker, then scrambled to his feet.  “Wait, not that one!”

            Too late.  Curt was already reading one of the marked pages.  “Shit, this is really hardcore…”  Curt’s eyes were enormous, and so was the bulge in his trousers.

            Arthur snatched it away from him.  “It’s not—I don’t read it for—it was a present!” he insisted, his whole face feeling hot.

            “Who from?” Curt asked, eyeing him suspiciously.

            “Ray,” Arthur said, shoving the book back in the locker, and starting to put the rest of his books back in front of it.  “He and Malcolm were ‘aving this…contest…of sorts…”

            “What sort of contest?”  Both eyes were very narrow now.

            Arthur cleared his throat uncomfortably.  Even under the best of circumstances, he didn’t like to admit that two of the Flaming Creatures had decided to use him as judge and jury regarding their sexual prowess and creativity.  And these were definitely not the best of circumstances.  “It was a long time ago,” Arthur answered quietly, shutting the door of the locker firmly.

            “That’s an evasion.”

            “Of course it is!  Curt, please, just sit quietly and let me work, all right?  Please?”

            Curt sighed exaggeratedly, and went over to sit on the bed.  Gratefully, Arthur resumed typing, but the silence didn’t last long.  “So does that mean what you write _isn’t_ qualified as pornography?”

            “Depends on your standards,” Arthur sighed.  “When it was written, _Jude the Obscure_ was denounced as pornographic.”

            There was a lengthy pause.  Curt was probably trying to figure out if he’d heard of the book, and who it was by if he had.  “Was it?”

            “Not by our standards.”  Of course, just like many other hopeful teenage idiots, Arthur had read it in the hopes that it secretly _was_ pornographic, only to be deeply disappointed.  “My books are officially designated ‘adult romances,’ if you want to know.”

            “What about that one Ray gave you?”

            Arthur coughed.  “I think it’s qualified as illegally printed in a Paris basement.”  Essentially, it was a gay kama sutra, with excessive verbal detail to make up for the lack of illustrations, and with considerably more fetishism.  Arthur had outright refused to even contemplate taking part in at least half the things described in it, and Ray hadn’t actually had the nerve to act on more than about a third of the ones Arthur hadn’t rejected.

            Curt allowed Arthur to work in silence for about another minute.  Maybe only forty-five seconds.  “So what would I have to do to make you want to tell me about that contest?”

            “Curt, not now…”

            “I’m not gonna try and force it out of you.  I just wanna know, that’s all.  There’s gotta be something I could do, right?”

            Arthur could feel his lips curving into a rather wicked smile as he glanced at Curt over his shoulder.  “You want to know about it?  Then let me top you.”

            Curt coughed, and looked away.  “I don’t think I wanna know that bad…”

            “Thought not,” Arthur muttered under his breath, as he returned to his work.

            This time, the silence actually lasted long enough for Arthur to finish writing up the summary of the hearing.  He called Curt over to read the text over his shoulder, check for errors and omissions.  The whole time Curt was reading it, Arthur couldn’t help staring at him.  It was an odd angle to have on another human being; his face was right at Curt’s upper jaw.  Every so often in the process, Curt started mouthing the words silently, making the hinge of his jaw slide ever so subtly up and down, and causing the muscles in his neck to tense up and relax again.  Curt’s neck was only a few inches from Arthur’s face, and although the solicitor had brought him some aftershave lotion, Curt hadn’t had a chance to shower, and the rich, unwashed smell of his body—of their sex from last night—was tearing through the tame, artificial scent.  More than anything else, Arthur found that the temptation to stretch out his neck and start nibbling on Curt’s jaw was almost overwhelming.

            After a beautiful-yet-brief eternity, Curt offered a couple of corrections to his speech, and said the rest of the summary was all right.  As Arthur typed in the changes, he could hear Curt sitting back down on Arthur’s flimsy bed.  Once the corrections were completed, Arthur saved the file, and set it to printing.  Then, eagerly, he joined Curt on the bed, and immediately started kissing him.  He knew they’d have to stop as soon as the solicitor got back with the pizza, forcing back into mundane reality, but until then he wanted to revel in this pure, perfect passion.


	17. Chapter Sixteen

            For the fifth time, Mandy checked her make-up in the mirror, and made fiddling little adjustments to her hair.  She didn’t want to leave the office and go out onto the bar’s puny little stage tonight.  Normally, she’d step out of the office, do her set to a bar occupied by two or three people who weren’t paying the least bit of attention to her, get no applause whatsoever, have one or two drinks too many, and go home.  That had happened hundreds of times before.

            But the universe loved to have a laugh at her expense.  While she had been out of town for a family wedding—her _niece_ ’s, of all the mortifying things, while Mandy still had no children of her own—everything had exploded.  Brian’s secret had gone public, Curt was engaged in yet another scandalous love affair—everything he did was scandalous by nature, but the boy really was much too young for him—and had gotten himself arrested yet again, and when Mandy showed up for work today, the owner told her that people had been calling to ask about her.

            Maybe the story was old news by now.  People had short attention spans.  And in the midst of a presidential election, they tended to forget everything that _wasn’t_ the election at the drop of a hat.  So maybe Mandy would go out there and face an empty room, the same way she always did.

            That was what she was hoping for, but she didn’t dare count on it; she had to take precautions.  She hadn’t worked this hard on her appearance in seven or eight years.  Whatever the last time was she tried to go on a real date.  Just in case there was anyone out there waiting for her, she wanted to make sure she looked presentable, not like a patient just escaped from rehab.

            Eventually, she could stall no longer.  Steeling herself with a deep breath, Mandy opened the door and headed towards the stage.  She wasn’t halfway there before the flashbulbs started blazing, and the flood had surrounded her.

            “Mrs. Slade!” one of them shouted at her, shoving a microphone into her face.  “Is it true you and your husband are suing over this latest novel by—”

            “My _ex_ -husband can do whatever he likes,” Mandy said sharply, pushing the microphone away, “but I have no plans to sue anyone.  In fact, if he has the gall to put my name on a lawsuit he’s pursuing, I’ll sue _him_!”

            “You’ve been out of town, haven’t you?” one of the others said.  “Maybe you don’t know about—”

            “I haven’t been in a cave, gentlemen,” Mandy laughed.  “They have television at my parents’ house.  I know all about what’s going on.  And a gay friend in town here purchased a copy of _Infamy_ the day it came out, then sent it to me by overnight mail.  I think it’s a perfectly charming book.  Miles better than _Celebrity_.”

            They didn’t seem to know what to make of that.  Hardly surprising.  A few of them tried to ask further questions, but the words fell out of their lips half-formed.

            “I was married to a very…colorful performer for four years,” Mandy reminded them.  “A man whose fame came not just from his genius, but from his sheer talent for making himself an outrageously bold center of attention.  As his wife, I shared in that attention, and I thrived in it.  I’m hardly going to be upset by every fan who wants to write up his own version of events years later.”  She shook her head.  “In fact, _Celebrity_ was the only one of those books that really felt like it had been written by a _fan_ ; the rest felt like cheap attempts to capitalize on Brian’s fall from favor.  Had he ever tried to sue those others, I might have cooperated; I was usually painted as a dim little dupe, unaware of what her husband was doing, and unable to cope with it when she found out.”  Rather like Shannon had been, actually.  “When he wrote _Celebrity_ , that silly boy may have mistaken me for a socialite from Bath, but at least he made me fully aware of everything that was going on between my husband and his lover, aware and approving, as I—for the most part—really was.”

            “For the most part?” one of the reporters repeated, moving his TV camera closer to her.

            “I knew Brian intended to have a fling with Curt the moment he said he wanted to meet him,” Mandy assured them, “but I hadn’t expected they were going to fall quite so deeply in love.  But it made Brian happy, and I had plenty of other people to keep me entertained, so I was willing to accept it.  You have to understand something about Brian:  a genius is never contented with what would satisfy a normal man.  They need more.  Much, much more, far more than any one person could ever give them.  I wasn’t capable of giving him everything he needed, and I knew that.  I won’t lie and say that I liked it, but I liked seeing him happy, so I did my best to carry on.  The problem is that a genius like Brian is also terribly proud.  He won’t apologize.  It’s just not in his nature.  But it’s not in Curt’s nature, either.  They didn’t really want to break up, you know, but they had just said too many things they couldn’t take back, and neither of them could swallow his pride enough to apologize.”  She smiled sadly.  “The ending of _Celebrity_ made me cry when I first read it.  Because that was how they had really wanted their story to end.  But neither of them was willing to bend enough to allow it.”  She chuckled, then looked right into the camera.  “Are you going to air this?”

            “Probably,” the man with the camera said.

            “Arthur, you remember what I just said, all right?” Mandy said into the camera.  “If you and Curt get in another fight, remember it’s going to be _your_ job to man up and apologize, because _he’s_ never going to do it.  Whatever you do, don’t assume he wants to break up just because he said stupid, hurtful things.  That man runs his mouth off without a single thought, but he rarely means it.”  She didn’t _really_ want to see Curt and Arthur end up in a long-term relationship—Curt was too prone to being selfish, and as a devoted fan, Arthur was sure to end up being abused, whether intentionally or not—but it didn’t seem fair to deny them a little good advice.  Besides, it would piss Brian off.

            “You don’t want to see Brian and Curt get back together?” a middle-aged woman asked, a mournful look on her face.  She’d probably been their fan ten years ago, poor thing.

            “Brian is dead,” Mandy said firmly, practically spitting the words out.  “All that’s left now is Tommy Stone.”  How good it felt to be able to finally say it!  How long had it been since she had been able to talk about Brian in public without feeling eyes on the back of her head, watching her?

            “What did you think of _Infamy_ ’s ending?” another reporter asked.  “It’s become somewhat infamous in itself.”

            Mandy laughed.  “When I got to the end, I called Curt—long-distance from my parents’ place!—to yell at him for being such a terrible person!  Everyone was characterized so perfectly, I’d almost forgotten it was fiction.”  She shook her head.  “He was pissed about the ending, too, of course.  Gave me quite the earful talking about it.”  And went into far more detail than she had wanted to hear about his sexual history with Arthur.  Even though at that point it had only been a one-night stand in the summer of ’74 and three more nights earlier this year.  “He wasn’t sure if he should say ‘to hell with this jerk’ or call him and give him a chance to defend himself.  Obviously, I told him he’d regret it if he didn’t at least talk to him one more time.”  Of course, she hadn’t expected it would actually work out.  Arthur must have been practically _groveling_.  From what she remembered of him interviewing her in early February, that was quite hard to imagine.

            “Have you met Mr. King—or rather, Mr. Stuart?” one of the other reporters asked.

            “Briefly.  The first third of _Infamy_ is based very closely on real events from this February.”  Thankfully, Arthur had been unduly kind in describing her in the book.  Rather than say she looked like a burned-out husk—as she knew perfectly well she had—he had described her as being without make-up, having a worn look, but still clearly the same beauty she had been ten years earlier.  “He interviewed me for a story about Brian, though it was eventually cancelled, and never saw print.”  But apparently he had somehow figured out what she had steadfastly refused to tell him.  She’d have to ask him someday how he did that.

            “Why was it cancelled?” a female reporter asked from the front.  “Does it have anything to do with the novel’s implicit allegations against the Committee for Cultural Renewal?”

            “I’m sure you’d have to ask the newspaper where he works about why it was cancelled,” Mandy replied, with a nervous smile.

            “That’s only half an answer.”

            “It’s the only answer I can give you.”  If she dared talk about how she had been threatened into silence…

            “Why did you never tell the world about Brian Slade’s new identity before now?”

            “What Brian and I had is long over, but it was beautiful while it lasted.  I wouldn’t betray him so casually as that.”  It sounded believable.  Probably.

            “In _Infamy_ , Jane and Ruddy are both being actively threatened to keep Alexander’s new identity secret,” that female reporter in the front said.  “Was that part also based on reality?”

            “If it was, I’d be a marked woman for saying so, wouldn’t I?”  Mandy laughed.  Most of the reporters laughed, too.  Good.  They thought it was a joke.  Most of them, anyway.  That woman in the front didn’t look convinced at all.


	18. Chapter Seventeen

            It had been more than a week since his hearing, and Curt kept telling himself that he now—for the first time in ten years—had a real, steady boyfriend.  So why hadn’t he gotten laid in a whole week?!

            On top of that, Arthur was now almost half an hour late to their second date.

            As he waited, Curt tried to tell himself that the week-long delay hadn’t really been Arthur’s fault.  There was that whole lawsuit business, after all.  Arthur had lost a whole day in court, even though it basically came down to a big waste of everyone’s time:  Mandy’s lawyer came in as the list of plaintiffs was being read off, and slapped Tommy with a lawsuit for having the gall to include Mandy’s name among the plaintiffs against her will, and after that, she had sat down at the table with Arthur’s lawyer, said something to him, and Arthur’s lawyer had pointed out that the case was now being presented as if by two plaintiffs, despite that the two plaintiffs were one and the same person.  Tommy had tried to defend himself and claim he wasn’t really Brian, but no one was buying it, and the case was thrown out.  Tommy had sworn he would sue again, but his lawyers were probably too busy dealing with Mandy’s lawsuit to worry about Arthur.

            The very next day, the Committee for Cultural Renewal had made its move against the publisher who put out Arthur’s books, and another giant court battle was started, as the ACLU, several free speech organizations and a gay rights group all sued the committee for overstepping its bounds.  The NYC court had to throw out the case as outside its jurisdiction, but that had been enough:  the ruckus was so huge that the committee had finally been brought to the attention of Congress, and a congressional subcommittee had been convened to investigate it.  After a few days of that, enough had come to light that Reynolds himself had to step back and disavow his own pet project, claiming he had had no idea what they were really up to.  And some of his followers believed him.  But a lot of people didn’t, and his numbers had plummeted.  With a little over two weeks to the election, Reynolds and Mondale were almost neck and neck at the polls.  Curt didn’t really know anything about Mondale, but he’d have to be an improvement over Reynolds, so that was great.

            What wasn’t great was that, as a primarily political reporter, Arthur had been up to his ears in work, and hadn’t been able to take a single day off, having given up his weekend on their previous date, and then his own court appearance.

            And that sucked.  Curt really needed some action.

            Now.

            After settling the bill for the beers he’d drunk while he was waiting, Curt left the restaurant—giving them a message for Arthur just in case he still showed up—and went back to his car.  It shouldn’t take him ten minutes to drive to Arthur’s apartment from here…

            The building was just as crappy as the last two times Curt had been there.  And this time the landlord let him in with a smirk.  Fine.  Who cared?

            The limerick written on the wall near the elevator had been changed since Curt had been there last.  “Nantucket” had been crossed off, and “London” scrawled in its place in a different hand.

            That did it.

            That was just _it_.

            As soon as the elevator got down to the dingy, musty basement level, Curt headed towards Arthur’s door.  He could hear the printer going even as he knocked on the door.  Arthur looked shocked to see him, for some reason.  “Curt?  What…?”

            “You’re forty-five fucking minutes late!” Curt snapped at him.

            “Am I?  I’m sorry!  I lost track of time!”  Arthur hastily shut the door to remove the chain, then let Curt into the apartment.

            “Just that the hell were you doing, anyway?” Curt demanded, looking suspiciously at the pages being spewed by the printer.

            “I finished it,” Arthur told him proudly.  “The new ending.”  He kissed Curt sweetly.  “You can ‘ave a look while I get ready to go, if you want.”

            Trying to read pages that were connected to pages still being printed was definitely more trouble than it was worth, and Curt quickly abandoned the idea.  Instead, he leaned against the doorframe into the bathroom, watching as Arthur brushed his hair and his teeth and generally got himself ready to go.

            “You don’t actually like living here, do you?” Curt asked.

            “In New York?”

            Curt laughed.  “In this apartment.”

            “God, no.”

            “Good.  We’ll find you someplace new tomorrow.”

            “Excuse me?”  Arthur looked at him with big, confused eyes.  “Did I miss something?”

            “I’m not gonna be able to sleep, knowing you’re in a rathole like this.  So you’re moving.”

            “I don’t think it’s your place to decide that,” Arthur told him, sighing.  “Unless you’re offerin’ to ‘ave me move in with you,” he added, with a shy little smile.

            Curt had to look away.  The idea was really fucking tempting.  God knows he didn’t want any walls between him and the object of his desires.  “Probably not a good idea at this stage,” he admitted uncomfortably.  “A little too soon.”

            “Well, I can’t afford to move,” Arthur assured him.  “Lowly paid journalist, remember?”

            “And a best-selling novelist.”

            “Not as impressive as it sounds,” Arthur sighed.  “None of them got all that many copies printed up to begin with.  Believe me, it’s not enough to live on.”

            Curt sighed.  “Then you’re gonna have to start spending a lot more nights at my place.  ‘Cause I don’t feel like you’re safe here.”

            Arthur grinned at him widely.  “ _That_ I will be happy to do,” he agreed.

            “So, am I gonna like the new ending?”

            “I hope so.”

            “Tell me about it.”

            “It’s pretty much as we discussed before,” Arthur assured him, as he fixed Brian’s pin through his buttonhole.  “Johnny sees the sniper about to shoot Ruddy, stops him, confesses everything, and then Ruddy and Phil go back to Ruddy’s place for some particularly wonderful sex.”

            “How many pages of it?”

            Arthur laughed.  “Once it’s formatted down to paperback size, should be about five.”

            “Nice!”  Most of the sex scenes petered out after about three pages.  “Can we try acting it out?” Curt asked.

            “I was hoping we might,” Arthur assured him, with a slight flushing of his cheeks.  Then he gently moved past Curt and detached the pages from the printer before turning off his computer.  “I thought maybe you could read the new pages while we wait for our food at the restaurant,” Arthur explained.

            “Sure.”  They headed for the door, but as Arthur reached to open it, Curt stopped him with a hand on his shoulder, turning him to face Curt.  “Hey, I…I’ve really missed you this past week,” Curt told him, a little uncomfortably.  “I don’t want us to go so long again between making love, okay?”

            “I’ll certainly do my best,” Arthur assured him, with a passionate kiss.


End file.
